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Contact Alex Day or Donovan Rees

We stock a range of antiquarian music, books on music, manuscripts and autographs, with an emphasis on early printed editions and manuscript scores of important composers.

Recent catalogues have included one of a very few surviving lifetime manuscripts of Scarlatti's harpsichord sonatas; a remarkable collection of vocal and instrumental music from the library of the duchesse de Berry; and inscribed first editions of works by Berg, Janacek, Poulenc, Rimsky-Korsakov, Schumann, Shostakovich, Stravinsky and Vaughan Williams.
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  1. [ADOLPHUS, Prince, later Duke of Cambridge.]

    Manuscript collection of fifty-four songs in Italian, French and German.

    [Hanover?, 1796.]

    The seventh son of George III and Queen Charlotte, Prince Adolphus (1774–1850), was born in London, but in 1786 was sent alongside his two brothers Ernest and Augustus to be educated in Göttingen, then followed a military career, with successive positions in both the Hanoverian and the British armies....

    £2850

  2. [ANTIPHONAL.]

    Antiphonal, with neumes, containing music for the blessing of the Paschal Candle on Holy Saturday.

    Southern Germany or Bohemia, mid-fifteenth century.

    An unusual and striking antiphonal leaf written entirely in red and notated entirely in burnished gold, signalling the importance of the text for Holy Saturday.

    £4250

  3. ARISTIDES, Aelius. 

    Orationum tomi tres, nunc primum latine versi a Gulielmo Cantero Ultraiectino.  Huc accessit orationum tomus...

    Basel, Peter Perna and Heinrich Petrus, 1566. 

    First edition in Latin, a remarkable copy once owned by one of the preeminent music theorists and composers of Renaissance Italy, Gioseffo Zarlino.  The translation was prepared from the Greek by the German scholar Wilhelm Canter (1542–1575), author of an acclaimed Syntagma, a systematic...

    £2750

  4. BLANCHET, Joseph.

    L’art, ou les principes philosophiques du chant. IIe edition, corrigée et augmentée.

    Paris, Augustin-Martin Lottin, Michel Lambert and Nicolas-Bonaventure Duchesne, 1756.

    First edition. The designation ‘IIe edition, corrigée et augmentée’ on the title arises from the publication in 1755 of L’art du chant, dedié a Madame de Pompadour by Jean-Antoine Bérard, whom Blanchet accuses of incorporating his material. The two works certainly include many passages which...

    £750

  5. BLANKENBURG, Quirinus Gerbrandszoon van.

    Elementa musica of niew licht tot het welverstaan van de musiec en de bas-continuo. Door...

    The Hague, Laurens Berkoske, 1739.

    First edition, very scarce.

    £1500

  6. BROWN, Arthur Henry.

    Autograph manuscript notebook mainly of Christmas carols.

    [Brentwood?, 1864–87].

    An autograph manuscript notebook composed primarily of Christmas carols, compiled carefully over some twenty-five years from various sources including manuscripts in the British Museum, early printed books, and contemporary books and periodicals.

    £450

  7. [CALLIGRAPHIC SCORES.]

    Two anonymous manuscript scores.

    London, 1820s.

    Two charming productions, sent as anonymous gifts, presumably to the wife or daughter(s) of Col. Thomas Nuttall (or Nuthall) (d. 1829) of the Madras Cavalry.

    £850

  8. CAVALCANTI, Bartolomeo. 

    La retorica … divisa in sette libri, dove si contiene tutto quello, che appartiene all’arte Oratoria. In...

    Venice, Gabriel Giolitto, 1559. 

    Second edition, published in the same year as the first with a few amendments, of the earliest Italian and most innovative treatise on rhetoric.  The author ‘builds an original account of rhetoric by adding Ciceronian and Hermogenean material to an Aristotle base’ (Mack, p. 172). 

    £2250

  9. CESAROTTI, Melchiorre, librettist.

    Adria consolata festa teatrale nel solenne giorno natalizio della sacra R.I. Maesta’...

    Venice, Vincenzo Rizzi, [1803].

    First edition, very rare, of this libretto of Adria consolata, performed at Venice’s Teatro La Fenice on 12 February 1803 in honour of the birthday of Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (1768–1835).

    £275

  10. [CHANSONS.]

    Manuscript collection of arias, chansons, and romances, including pieces by Bianchi, Bruni, Paisiello, Beauvarlet-Charpentier...

    [France (Nantes?), c. 1795.]

    A fascinating manuscript collection of French songs, both operatic and popular, compiled in the years after the Thermidorean Reaction and the execution of Robespierre.

    £2400

  11. CHERUBINI, Luigi.

    Autograph note signed ‘L. Cherubini’ regarding the cellist Auguste Franchomme.

    [Paris,] 19 December 1825.

    A short note in which the composer and director of the Conservatoire de Paris Luigi Cherubini records that ‘Mr. Franchomme’ has been admitted into the class of ‘Mr. Seuriot’ and that he will begin there on 22 December 1825.

    £350

  12. CLARI, Giovanni Carlo Maria.

    Manuscript score ‘VI Duetti Madrigaleschi’.

    [Italian, late eighteenth century?]

    A collection of six madrigals for two voices, comprising ‘La Moglie gelosa’, ‘Il Pellegrino’, ‘Il Vanegio’, ‘L’ambizio indigente’, ‘Il Pazzo inamorato’, ‘Il Maestro di Cappella che compone alla Mosaica’.

    £850

  13. CLARI, Giovanni Carlo Maria.

    Manuscript score of a collection of six two-part madrigals: ‘N° VI Madrigali a due voci’.

    Italy, mid-eighteenth century.

    A collection of secular madrigals for two voices by the composer Clari (1677–1754), written for soprano/bass, soprano/alto, and soprano/tenor, each with instrumental bass accompaniment.

    £1800

  14. DELLOYE, H.-L. (editor).

    Chants et chansons populaires de la France [– notices par M. du Mersan], première [– deuxième;...

    Paris, Félix Locquin [– Dondey-Dupré; – Félix Locquin] for Garnier, 1843.

    First edition of a finely illustrated, serially published collection of French music, broad-margined, extra-illustrated, and accompanied by the later fourth series. Formed of four series of twenty-eight issues, sold individually at sixty centimes from February 1842, the Chants et chansons populaires...

    £450

  15. ESSER, [Karl?] Michael, Ritter von.

    Sei Quartetti per due violini viola, e basso composti espressamente per una Società...

    [Venice, Marescalchi e Canobbio, 1774?]

    First edition, very rare, of a complete set of quartet part-books published in Venice by the composer–publishers Marescalchi and Canobbio.

    £1750

  16. FABRIZI, Pietro.

    Regole generali di canto fermo raccolte da diversi autori … in questa quarta impresione corrette, & ampliate.

    Rome, Mascardi, 1708.

    ‘Fourth’ edition of a small practical manual of plain-chant, with examples, first published in 1651. Fabrizi, a Florentine about whom little is known, was maestro di capella at Santo Spirito in Sassia in Rome. The treatise was referred to by Bononcini in his Musico pratico; a ‘third...

    £500

  17. [FOPPA, Giuseppe.] Francesco PANORMO, translator.

    Aci e Galatea, a pastoral Opera, as represented at the King’s Theatre...

    London: Printed by C. Clarke … 1795.

    First edition, very rare, of the dual-language libretto for Foppa’s Acis and Galatea (première Venice 1792) – in Italian verse and English prose. The translation was by Francesco Panormo, the eldest son of the instrument-maker Vincenzo Panormo.

    £650

  18. [FOUNDLING HOSPITAL.]

    Psalms, Hymns & Anthems used in the Chapel of the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of exposed &...

    [London], 1774 [but c. 1780?]

    The Foundling Hospital was established by Thomas Coram in 1739 as Britain’s first charity for the care of orphaned or abandoned children. ‘The Hospital chapel, in use by 1749 and officially opened in 1753, soon became well known for its music as well as for its elegant architecture and adornments’...

    £750

  19. FREZZA DALLE GROTTE, Gioseppe.

    Il Cantore ecclesiastico breve, facile, ed essatta notizia del canto fermo per istruzzione de’...

    Padua, Stamperia del Seminario (Giovanni Manetti), 1698.

    First edition of an uncommon plainchant manual published for the use of the Minorites (Conventual Franciscans). The two striking woodcuts depict a book of plainchant on a cantor’s lectern, and the famous Guidonian hand, a medieval mnemonic device to assist with sight-singing.

    £1250

  20. [GEORGE V.]

    The Form and Order of the Service that is to be performed and of the Ceremonies that are to be observed in the Coronation...

    London, Novello & Company, 1911.

    A handsome copy of the Coronation service, with choral settings of the music sung, including (among others) Parry’s ‘I was glad’, Handel’s ‘Zadok the Priest’, and ‘God save the King!’, arranged by Sir Frederick Bridge (1844–1924), organist at Westminster Abbey.

    £450