Dictionnaire de Musique.

ROUSSEAU (Jean Jacques)

Published by A Paris Chez la Veuve Duchesne., 1768

About this Item

FIRST EDITION. 4to, 251 x 194 mms., pp. ix [x - xii Avertissement and Errata], 548 [but 556] [557 - 558 Approbation, 559 - 560 blank], 13 folding engraved plates, contemporary mottled calf, spine ornately gilt in compartments, red leather label; base of spine wormed, top of spine chipped, slight wear to joints, but a good copy with the autograph and date (15 October 1822) of the German composer and musician Louis Kindscher (1800 - 1875) on the lower margin of the recto of the front free end-paper. Kindscher has annotated the work copiously Thomas Hunt described Rousseau's Dictionnaire as "a vital force in determining musical thought in the second half of the [eighteenth] century." Rousseau's compendium is widely considered the first modern music dictionary. Conceived partly as a corrective to his articles on music for the Encyclopédie by Diderot and d'Alembert, which were completed in haste and contained factual errors, its influence on subsequent works of its kind was profound. According to New Grove, Rousseau's long essays contained "its most valuable material." Kindscher (aka Heinrich Karl Ludwig Kindscher) bought and presumably annotated the book when he was only 22 and studying with Johann Gottfried Schicht (1753 - 1823), shortly before Schicht's death. This was possibly one of his textbooks, as the end-papers and the engraved music leaves are full of annotations; other annotations are loosely inserted on separate sheets of paper. Little seems to be know about him, though he wrote interesting and useful essays for the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. He also seems to have been something of a collector of books and manuscripts: an 18th century theorist and composer called Friedrich Suppig (about whom even less is known) drafted an essay entitled "Labyrinthus musicus," which contains a short preface and a musical composition entitled Fantasia, which uses all 24 keys and is intended for an enharmonic keyboard with 31 notes per octave and pure major thirds. In 1863, the document was in the possession of Louis Kindscher of Köthen who mentioned the work in the periodical Euterpe (22, 1863). Tchemerzine-Scheler V, 553. Seller Inventory # 9030

Bibliographic Details

Title: Dictionnaire de Musique.

Publisher: A Paris Chez la Veuve Duchesne.

Publication Date: 1768

Binding: Hardcover

Edition: 1st Edition