TOSI (Pierre Francesco): - Observations on the Florid Song; Or, Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers. Written in Italian By Pier. Francesco Tosi...Translated into English by Mr. [John Ernest] Galliard. Useful for all Performers, Instrumental as well as Vocal. To which are added, Explanatory Annotations, and Examples in Music. The Second Edition.

London: Printed for J. Wilcox..., 1743. 12mo, 156 x 88 mms., pp. xviii [xix contents, xx adverts], 184, 6 folding engraved plates of music, blue silk end-papers, 19th century hard grain red morocco. with gilt cypher initials holding within a gilt coronet on each cover, spine blocked in gilt, all edges gilt. A very good copy, with the Ex Libris of Peter Stewart Young Tillingham on the front paste-down end-paper. Tosi (1653 - 1732) was one of the best castrati of his day and first sang in London in 1692. The above work was first published in 1723 as Opinioni de' Cantori Antichi e Moderni. As New Grove notes, the work remains "a valuable source of information about Baroque performing practice, particularly regarding the interpretation of appoggiaturas, trills and other vocal ornaments and the use of tempo rubato." John Ernest Galliard (c.1687 - 1749), a German composer who worked in London, had a reasonable success as a composer of operas and incidental music for the stage. His translation of the work by Tosi, whom he knew, adds a number of notes and observations to Tosi's original.

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