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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. MOZART, Wolfgang Amadeus.

    Les Mistères d’Isis, opéra en quatre Actes. Representé à Paris au théâtre des Arts. Paroles de...

    Paris, chez Sieber père … [1801?]

    First edition, scarce, printing much of the score Die Zauberflöte (1791) for the first time, albeit in the distorted form of a pasticcio by Ludwig Lachnith, adapted to the tastes of contemporary Paris with a new text by Étienne Morel de Chédeville. The full unadulterated score was not published...

    £4250

  2. PLAYFORD, John.

    Psalms & Hymns in solemn Musick of foure Parts on the common Tunes to the Psalms in Metre: used in Parish-Churches....

    London, Printed by W. Godbid for J. Playford, at his Shop … 1671.

    First edition of the first harmonised Psalter after the Restoration, a landmark work in the re-introduction of part-singing into churches.

    £1850

  3. [PLAYING CARDS.]

    Cartes Magiques Musicales. 1001 Danses pour Piano. / Magical Musical Cards or Thousand and one Dances for Piano.

    Paris, Bass, c. 1830.

    The complete Piquet deck of these rare and unusual musical playing cards including the English rules for the game, a delightful example of a nineteenth-century parlour game produced for the Anglo-French market.

    £3000

  4. POLLINI, Francesco.

    Preludio cantabile e rondo per piano forte composti e dedicati al sigr W. A. Mozart, figlio … Opera 44.

    Milan, Ferdinando Artaria, [1821].

    First edition, rare, of a work for solo piano dedicated to Mozart’s youngest son Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart. Born to a Venetian family in Ljubljana, now Slovenia, Pollini (1762–1846) lived in Vienna from 1783 to 1790; he was the dedicatee of two pieces by Mozart and sang the role of Idamante...

    £350

  5. [PRELLEUR, Peter.]

    The Compleat Tutor for the Harpsichord or Spinnet wherein is shewn the Italian Manner of Fingering with suits...

    London, Peter Thompson, musical instrument maker [1755?]

    First edition thus?, an abridgment of part 6 of Prelleur’s Modern Musick-Master (1731) but with different musical examples. The examples, printed on pp. 5–32, include popular tunes and dances alongside pieces adapted from Handel and Corelli.

    £1250

  6. RAMEAU, Jean-Philippe.

    Zoroastre, tragedie, mise en musique par M. Rameau, représentée pour la premiere fois par l’Académie...

    Paris, Boivin, Leclair, Castagneri and the author, [c. 1750].

    First edition; rare. Despite a strong cast and a lavish production, Zoroastre met with only limited success (and, it seems, much bewilderment) when first performed at the Opéra in 1749. By May 1752 Rameau and the librettist Louis de Cahusac had begun an extensive reworking of the opera....

    £5000

  7. RECUEIL DE QUADRILLES

    pour le Piano.

    [France, 1840s?]

    A delightful album, evidently produced as a gift, collecting 17 popular dances arranged for the piano, each with a different decorative title-page. Composers whose work is featured include Philippe Musard (1792–1859), one of the most famous musicians in Europe in the 1830s and ’40s, ‘the doyen...

    £850

  8. RIDOLFI, Luca Antonio. 

    Aretefila, dialogo, nel quale da una parte sono quelle ragioni allegate, le quali affermano, lo amore...

    Lyons, Guillaume Rouillé, 1562. 

    Annotated copy, once owned by a music book collector, of the third edition (first 1557) of a remarkable Renaissance philosophical dialogue on the nature of love which marked the culmination of the very divisive ‘questione d’amore’ hotly debated in sixteenth-century literature. 

    £2800

  9. RINUCCINI, Ottavio.

    La Dafne, nuovamente stampata in occasione delle felicissime nozze del signor marchese Pier Francesco Rinuccini,...

    Florence, Borgognissanti, 1810.

    Scarce edition of Rinuccini’s Dafne, the first printed opera libretto; a rare survival preserved unbound in folded sheets.

    £650

  10. [ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques.] 

    Le Devin du village, intermede, représenté devant Sa Majesté a Fontainebleau, le Mecredi 14 Novembre...

    [Paris,] Pierre-Robert-Christophe Ballard, 1770. 

    Rare edition of a later lifetime performance of Rousseau’s influential opera, The Village Soothsayer, in an attractively unsophisticated sammelband of court operas. 

    £375

  11. [ROUSSEAU, Pierre.] 

    Considérations sur le théatre de l’opéra.  Novembre 1822. 

    [Paris,] de l’imprimerie de Rignoux, [1822].

    Very rare proposal for a new opera house in Paris by the architect Pierre Rousseau (1751–1829), annotated by the author and accompanied by an autograph letter. 

    £475

  12. SACCHI, Giovenale. 

    Del numero e delle misure delle corde musiche e loro corrispondenze.  Dissertazione del P. D. Giovenale...

    Milan, [Giuseppe Mazzucchelli (colophon),] 1761. 

    First edition of Sacchi’s first work: a theoretical study of music and acoustic from a mathematical and physical perspective built upon the most innovative eighteenth-century physics. 

    £850

  13. [SCHOLZE, Johann Sigismund.]

    Sperontes singende Muse an der Pleisse in 2 mahl 50 Oden, der neuesten und besten musicalische Stücke...

    Leipzig, auf kosten der lüstigen Gesellschaft [Breitkopf], 1741.

    Second edition of the first part, first edition of the second part – a hugely influential collection of German songs that laid the groundwork for the Romantic Lied. ‘Its engraved titles, imprinted notes and numerous charming woodcut vignettes make this one of the age’s most delightful...

    £4500

  14. SCHUBERT, Franz, composer. 

    A fine contemporary volume of ten works containing eighteen Lieder including his most famous...

    Vienna, 1821-1833. 

    A rare collection of Schubert Lieder in a contemporary binding, apparently as retailed by the Czech music publisher Berra, including three first editions. 

    £7500

  15. SPRÜNGLI, Johann Jacob, editor. 

    Männergesänge von Freunden der Tonkunst gesammelt, dem Liederkranze zu Franfurt a. M. in Liebe...

    Zürich, gedruckt bei J. J. Ulrich, im Verlage des Herausgebers, 1840.

    First edition, the partbook issue.  The work was also issued in score.  Both are very rare, OCLC locating a copy of the 1st Bass part at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and a set at the Swiss National Library.  There are apparently no copies in Germany: KVK shows the British Library copy (in...

    £950

  16. TANS’UR, William.

    The Royal Psalmodist compleat: or, the universal-Harmony …

    [St Neots?,] Printed by the Author, 1750.

    Unrecorded edition of Tans’ur’s Royal Psalmodist (first 1742), comprising seventy-three psalm tunes, a ‘Jubilate Deo’, a ‘Doxology’, ‘A New Magnificat’, and eleven anthems. It is based on the same selection (and plates) as he had issued in an edition of 1748 (BL only in ESTC),...

    £850

  17. TANS’UR, William.

    The Royal Psalmodist compleat: or, the universal Harmony. Containing all the very best Tunes both old and new,...

    Rugby: Engraved, and printed by the Author, and published according to Act of Parliament: A. D. 1742. And sold by most Book[s]ellers in Town...

    First edition, extremely rare, a collection of 150 psalm tunes (with settings in four parts) and one anthem, by the psalmodist and composer William Tans’ur (1700-1783).

    £4250

  18. TOLSTOY, Lev Nikolaevich.

    Zhivoi trup. Drama v 6 deistviiakh i 12 kartinakh [A Living Corpse. A drama in 6 acts and 12 scenes].

    Moscow, A. Ia. Petrov, [1911].

    One of the earliest printings of Tolstoy’s Living Corpse, one of a number of editions in 1911, the year it was first staged, posthumously, at the Moscow Arts Theatre, offered with a traditional gypsy folk song included in the performance of Act II of The Living Corpse, first edition...

    £2750

  19. VERHEYEN, Pierre Emmanuel.

    Requiem mass in C minor.

    [Flanders, c. 1810.]

    A very grand unpublished Requiem mass in memory of Franz Joseph Haydn, by the Flemish composer and singer Pierre Emmanuel Verheyen (1750–1819).

    £4750

  20. [VOGEL, Johann Christoph.]

    Démophon.

    [France (probably Paris), c. 1787].

    A contemporary scribal manuscript of Johann Christoph Vogel’s opera Démophon, from the library of Christoph Willibald Gluck.

    £5250