DOWLAND, John 1563-1626

Lachrimae or Seven Teares Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans, with divers other Pavans, Galiards, and Alamands, set forth for the Lute, Viols, or Violons, in five parts. London, Printed by John Windet, dwelling at the Signe of the Cross Keys at Powles Wharfe, and are to be sold at the Authors house in Fetter-lane neare Fleet-streete, [1604]. First Edition. 49pp., typeset folio. Modern full morocco, stamped in blind and gilt, matching cloth slip-case. An exceptionally fine copy, and a beautiful example of music printing from the period.

RISM D 3485; CPM 17, p.330.

This was the only known copy in private hands of the six extant copies, one of which is incomplete. It has a manuscript correction to the Bassus part of ‘M. Henry Noell his Galiard.’ Stewart McCoy in Chelys Vol. 15, (1986) pp.54-56 (the Viola da Gamba Society Journal) discusses the small discrepancies of the five copies in Great Britain (the sixth copy is in the Henry E. Huntington Library) and concludes that the imperfect copy at Manchester Public Library was printed first, our copy second and the British Library, Lincoln Cathedral and the Royal Academy copies afterwards.

MUSIC LIBRARY OF PRIMARY SOURCE MATERIAL

A comprehensive working music library of original primary source materials of printed and manuscript music, autograph letters and manuscripts as well as programmes and playbills containing all but 8000 separate items. It contained material by major and less well-known composers, and as a whole exemplified two centuries of European musical history (ca. 1750 – ca. 1960). The material, which encompassed the most important areas in music, jointly served the needs of both the researcher and performer.

Institutions whose musical departments have grown have had to consider the necessity of enlarging their collections of source material. Many have to rely on reprints and microfilm, which are not real substitutes for the student of musicology and bibliography. Original materials are becoming difficult to find: this music library with many rare and important works, some of which are only known in one or two copies, took 20 years to build.

[PERTI, Giacomo Antonio (1661-1756)]

A contemporary Italian manuscript in full score of the complete opera [La forza della virtù], libretto by Domenico David. Act I, 70 ff.; Act II, 60 ff.; Act III, 64 ff. Contemporary number (shelf-mark?) ‘132’ on flyleaf. Oblong folio. An exceptional contemporary binding in panelled full red morocco, beautifully tooled in gilt on spine and boards, all edges gilt and stamped with a floral pattern. Apparently written by a single scribe throughout. A very nice manuscript indeed in excellent condition.

A lost opera: the music apparently entirely unknown. Of Perti's thirty operas, composed between 1679 and 1710, the music of only seven is preserved.

The opera was first produced in a setting by C. F. Pollarolo at the Teatro S. Giovanni Grisostomo, Venice, in the week before 3 January 1693; the libretto is listed by Sartori under S.10873.

Unlike so many manuscript sources of this period, the music was complete and was in full score: other late seventeenth and early eighteenth century operas are usually in short score.

The manuscript is both an important addition to the known corpus of Perti’s music and to the repertory of late seventeenth century opera.

PUCCINI, Giacomo

An exceptional collection of 54 autograph letters and documents, together with one autograph letter each from Puccini’s son Antonio and Angelo Magrini. The letters were to some of his oldest and closest friends, including Bertolelli, Claudio Clausetti, Angelo Margrini, Leopold Mugnone, Sybil Seligman, Alfredo Vandini and Maria Carrara Verdi.

Twenty-seven of the letters appeared to be entirely unpublished, with one other extremely important letter unpublished apart from a short extract. Of the published items, eleven were first published in English and then re-translated back into Italian; these and most of the other published items have been printed only in inaccurate and incomplete versions.

This extraordinary collection related in detail to Puccini’s life and work spanning over a period of thirty years, between 1894-1924. These letters showed much about Puccini as a person, composer and shed light on his artistic nature.

In the collection Puccini wrote frequently about his progress, feeling and difficulties regarding his operas, which included a passionate unpublished letter about the fiasco of Butterfly in Milan. Some of the letters displayed his remarkable, evocative vision for new projected operas, and his excitement contained therein. Many of these works remained unwritten.

There were letters revealing his tragedy, his sense of humour, and in one or two cases his loves. There was hitherto, unpublished material about the Doria affair, which related to her suicide and Puccini’s subsequent depression. The final document, an agonizing plea, was apparently the last known document in the composer’s hand.