Author: ROSSINI. ITALIAN MUSIC. MAJER (Andrea):
Title: Essai de Littérature musicale concernant L'Origine, les Progrè et les Révolutions de la Musique Italienne, avec des Rémarkques critiques sur les véritable causes de sa décadence et le nouveu style de Rossini. Traduit de l'Italien par le Docteur Joseph de V alerian.
Description: Ratisbonne. In commission chez Mr. J. B. Reitmayer. 1829. FIRST EDITION OF THIS TRANSLATION. 8vo, 187 x 114 mms., pp. viii, 208 [209 errata, 210 blank], uncut, recently recased in marbled boards, with a photograph of Rossini, 100 x 60 mms., dated on verso 1863 with dates in contemporary hand, the photograph from Carjat & Cie. Andrea Majer (1776 - 1845) published his Discorso sulla Origine, Progressi, e Statto Attuale della Musica Italiana in 1821; it was described in Peter Lichtenthal's Dizionario e bibliografia della musica (1826) as "Questo eccellente libro...." The French translator, de Valerian, says of him, "Majer est aujourd'hui l'un des hommes les plus estimés de l'Italie. Il es à la fois peintre, littèrateur et musicien. Cette triple qualité donne un charme particulier à tout ce qui sort de sa plume...." This early assessment seems to be confirmed by Denise Gallor in Gioachino Rossini: A Research and Information Guide (2012): "An outspoken critic of the primo Ottocento was the Venetian Andrea Majer, whose writings on art and music criticized the 'outlandishness of the Italian Parnassus gone made. This treatise, divided into four parts, deals with the history of music in Italy from antiquity to the present.... Majer deemed the eighteenth century as the apex of musical culture. Prior to that, he said, art was corrupted by the extravagances and abuses of taste that he felt had returned in his own day. Not mentioning Rossini by name, Majer nonetheless denounces him in a footnote by calling him 'the Marini of Modern Music' because of the liveliness of his imagination...." Two copies located: Glasgow and Danish National Library

Keywords: music Rossini prose


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