LA BORDE, Jean-Benjamin de.
Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne.
With: (2) [LA BORDE, Jean-Benjamin de]. Mémoires sur les proportions musicales, le genre énarmonique des Grecs et celui des modernes ... Supplément a l'Essai sur la musique.
Paris, printed by Denys Pierres and sold by Eugène Onfroy, 1780-1781. 2 works in 4 volumes. 4to. Each title-page with engraved vignette, numerous engraved head- and tailpieces, letterpress music notes, 3 folding letterpress tables and 463 engraved plates (several folding). Contemporary calf, gold-tooled spines.
€ 14,000
Very rare first edition of a wide-ranging account of music, finely illustrated and including complete compositions by Claude le Jeune, Lassus, Ronsard and several others. It "remains an extremely valuable source of information on 18th-century music, as well as that of earlier periods and its historiography" (Fend). La Borde, a popular composer, writer and farm tax collector, assembled a vast amount of information on music, both European and non-European. The first volume describes, amongst others, the music of Chaldea, Egypt, Persia, Turkey and Arabia, followed by chapters on individual instruments, with illustrations of a marabba, tambura, semendsje, and a surma. Volumes 2-4 are devoted to composition and songs and the supplement describes harmony and proportion, concluding with the engraved text and music of a song, with the several parts ("basse", "taille" and "haute contre") engraved separately.
Jean-Benjamin de La Borde (1734-1794) studied the violin with Dauvergne and composition with the great Jean-Philippe Rameau. He composed many "opéras comiques" and wrote a number of books on topography, music, history and literature, but he is best remembered as the author of the present encyclopaedic work on music.
In very good condition. A renowned work on music, attractively bound in contemporary calf. Cohen 538; Fétis II, 26; Honegger II, 682; for La Borde: Fend, "La Borde, Jean-Benjamin de", in: Grove Music Online.
Related Subjects:
