Special Collections / Music Treatises

The last and most complete instruction book for the natural trumpet, this work is also valuable as a window onto Baroque technique and performance practice.

One of the earliest known American works containing drum lessons.

An early American method book for percussion instruments.

Includes instructions for flute, clarinet, bassoon, serpent, French horn, trumpet, oboe, violin, viola, bass-viol or violoncello, double bass, trombone, cymbals, tambourine, triangle, and bass-drum.

This work describes and illustrates all instruments used in military ensembles of the mid-19th century.

[28], 405, [43] pages, 11 unnumbered leaves of plates: illustrations; 14 cm. Engraved t.p. “Index authorum, qui hoc tractatu citantur”: pages [430]–[440]. Includes indexes. Title vignette. Initials; tail-pieces. Indexed In Fetis, V, p. 182. Various shelfmarks; library stamp from Bibl Publ. Basileensis on t.p. verso.

Includes instructions for flute, clarinet, bassoon, serpent, French horn, trumpet, oboe, violin, viola, bass-viol or violoncello, double bass, trombone, cymbals, tambourine, triangle, and bass-drum.

This work describes and illustrates all instruments used in military ensembles of the mid-19th century.

RISM B/VI, v. 1, pp. 70–41. Published in 1529 (and reprinted in 1530, 1532, and 1542, and revised in 1545), this work concerning musica instrumentalis, as distinct from musica plana and musica figuralis, was modeled both in its text and woodcut imagery on Sebastian Virdung (c. 1465 – after 1511), Musica getutscht (Basel, M. Furter, 1511). Like Virdung, Agricola presented his text in the vernacular rather than Latin.

In 1510, Luscinius met Sebastian Virdung (b.1465) at the Reichstag in Augsburg. Eight years later he completed this work of music theory which, like that by Agricola, is indebted to Virdung, Musica getutscht (Basel, 1511). Here the text is given in scholastic Latin, unlike Virdung’s vernacular, and is illustrated with numerous woodcuts of instruments.

This work considers the history of bells, including their functions in church and in secular society.

Treatise on an updated version of the armonica (musical glasses), originally invented by Benjamin Franklin in the second half of the 18th century.

Description of Chladni’s newly invented instrument the clavicylinder, which is a variation on the glass armonica.

This treatise for the performance of musical glasses is written in the form of a dialogue between the author and a student.

1 score ([2] volumes); 25 cm. Pages: vol. [1], misnumbered as: [cover as p. 1–2], [3], 4–12; [1] (price list); 5–46; vol. 2, 47–83, [84]. “Prices.”—p. [13]. Gives purchase prices for harmonicons. Contemporary wrappers, side-stiched; laid in single preservation container. Includes index of tunes, p. 83–[84]. Title on vol. 2: Grand harmonicon, or musical glasses.