TRYDELL (Rev. John):

Two Essays on the Theory and Practice of Music. In the First are laid down the Principles of the Science. In the Latter are demonstrated the Rules of Harmony, Composition, and Thorough Bass. To which is added, A new and short Method of attaining to Sing by Note.

Dublin: Printed for the Editor By Boulter Grierson..., 1766. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. 8vo, 195 x 120 mms., pp. xx, 140, disbound; lacks all 51 plates. Ellen T. Harris, in The Music Lover in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century England (Tufts Digital Library) writes that, 'John Trydell published his Two Essays on the Theory and Practice of Music with the hope of rendering "the knowledge of Music easy; and Composition more practicable than it seems to me it is among us at present." Trydell's strategy for making music easier was to construct a system based on geometrical reasoning (Kassler, p. 1024), in which he took great care, as he put it, "to avoid all obsolete Words, or such as are derived from other languages: and to speak as plain English, as the nature of the Subject would admit, that I may be understood by every English reader." [Trydell's essays were used for the article on 'Music' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1771, but never reprinted thereafter, since, as Kassler writes, "the opinion that music and geometry were congenial and inseparable was losing ground" (Kassler, p. 1025).]'

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Book number: 6350

Catalogue: Music

Keywords: music prose

VITORIO (Francisco Alvares): [MUSIC. CATHOLIC CHURCH:]

Cantum ecclesiasticum precibus apud Deum animas juvandi, Corpora'que humandi, Defunctorum Officium, missam, et stationes juxta ritum Sacrosanctae Romanae Ecclesiae omnium Ecclesiarum Matris, & Magistrae: Juxta Breviarii, Miss'isque Romani novissimam recognitionem. Nunc denuo in hac secunda editione luculenter castigatum, affluenterque illustratum, sumptibus reverendi P. Francisci Alvares Victorii, Thesaurii Parochialis Ecclesiae Divi Pauli, in lucem prodiit.

Ulyssipponae: apud Haered. Antonii Pedrozo Galram. M. DCC. LIII. 1753 4to, 195 x 138 mms., pp. [iv], 155 [156 blank], printed throughout with music, three pages of ms. notes before title-page and 4 pages at end of book, contemporary sheepskin, spine faintly gilt in compartments; top of spine chipped, base of spine slightly defective, corners worn, front cover scratched, front paste-down end-paper lifting, but with a clear text, and a contemporary inscriptiong "A. Neavey" on top margin of the title-page, and an inscription in pencil on the verso of the leaf facing the title-page, "W. J. A. Flynn/ Oxford/ Septr 1975." The Portuguese priest Francisco Alvares Vitorio is said to have been born in 1702, but his death date is not known. The Lisbon office of the Portuguese printer Antonio Pedroso Galrão (Latinized as Galram) was "founded c. 1695", according to The Oxford Companion to the Book (2010), which also says he died "c 1742", but the imprint of the item on offer shows the man, or his firm, still flourishing in 1753. This quarto with ecclesiastical music from 1753 is so rare that COPAC finds only a single copy: the one in the Special Collections Library at the University of Aberdeen. OCLC WorldCat has an entry on the book (OCLC Number 1113386154), and locates the aforementioned Aberdonian exemplar, but finds no others. As the title-page asserts, this is the second edition, but I have not found an earlier first edition.

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Book number: 10239

Catalogue: Music

Keywords: music Catholicism

WAGNER (Richard). CHAMBERLAIN (Houston Stewart):

Richard Wagner. Mit zahlreichern Portraits, Faksimiles, Illustrationen und Beilagen.

München Verlagsanstalt für Kunst und Wissenschaft vormals Friedrich Bruckmann 1896 FIRST EDITION. 4to, 305 x 229 mms., pp. xi [xii blank], 368, including half-title, collotype portrait of Wagner as frontispiece, title-page in red and black, illustrated throughout with portraits, music quotations, etc., original pebbled cloth, gilt spine, title in gilt on cover, top edge gilt; lower front cover binding defective, hinges a bit tender. A very heavy book. The philosopher Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855 - 1927) was born in Southsea but spent much of his adult life in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, where, resident in Vienna, he wrote this biography of Wagner. His second wife was the composer's daughter, Eva Wagner; he is buried in Bayreuth. In 1892, Chamberlain had written Das Drama Richard Wagners, but in this work, he wanted to present Wagner from within, as he was seen and saw himself. In A Companion to Wagner's Parsifal, William Kinderman, and ?Katherine Rae Syer note, "Chamberlain's new book [the biography], was widely distributed, lavishly illustrated, luxuriously bound in a manner that would grace the bookshelves of any bourgeois household. In its iconography, it often lapses into a form of bloated hyperbole that has result in its subsequent dismissal as mere sychophantic hagiography written to please the watching eye of Haus Wahnfried."

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Book number: 8921

Catalogue: Music

Keywords: music biography prose

WALKER (Joseph):

Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards. Interspersed with Anecdotes of, and Occasional Observations on the Music of Ireland. Also, an Historical and Descriptive Account of the Musical Instruments of the Ancient Irish. And an Appendix, Biographical and Other Papers, with Select Irish Melodies.

London: Printed for T. Payne and Son..., and G. G. and J. Robinson..., 1786 FIRST LONDON EDITION. 4to, 264 x 197 mms., pp. [iv] v - xii, 166, 124, engraved portrait frontispiece of Cormac Common, engraved head and tailpiece, several engravings in text, engraved plate at end of text block, attractively bound in contemporary mottled calf, with elaborate gilt borders to a floral motif, enclosing a triple gilt rectangular border, with a fan motif at each corner, spine gilt in compartments ( but faded), morocco label; bound without the two pages of music as an appendix, perhaps deliberately, with the binder having neatly excised the catchword and repaired the damage to the paper. Brian Boydell, writing in New Grove, asserts that the Irish antiquary, Joseph Cooper Walker (1761 - 1810), in his book, "though written in a turgid and verbose style, [it] includes much information not available elsewhere, particularlry in relation to the haper Turlouigh Carolan. Five poems and seven airs by Carolan are included in a chapter on his life. It also includes a highly fanciful essay by William Beauford, The Poetical Accents of the Irish, which sought to prove that a system of musical notation was in use in Ireland in the 11th and 12th centuries. In all, 43 Irish airs are included, providing one of the early sources of native Irish music, and a stimulus to its study, which was to bear fruit shortly afterwards in the work of Edward Bunting." Boydell's remarks are not that different in kind from those in the Monthly Review for December 1787: "The present rage for antiquities in Ireland surpasses that of any other nation in Europe. The Welsh who have no contemptible opinion of the antiquity of their poetry and music are left among the children of the earth by Mr. Walker and the writers of the Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis. Indeed, there is no antiquity short of the creation that can justify these authors." Morris, H. B. (2004). Joseph Cooper Walker, Esq. (C. 1761-1810), A Forgotten Irish Bard: A Dissection of His Advertisement as a Map to His Melodies. Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal, 5(1).

John Price Antiquarian BooksProfessional seller

Book number: 10480

Catalogue: Music

Keywords: music Irish literature