Description:
Folio (287x194 mm). 146, [6] leaves and [8] woodcut folding plates. Signatures: A-Z6 AA6 BB8. On the title page printer's device, showing Orpheus under a tree playing the viola. Author's portrait, at the age of 44, printed on title-page verso. Beautiful woodcut decorated initials. Music notation in text. Later polished calf gilt, marbled edges. Contemporary ownership's inscription on the title page: 'Est S. Petri de Perusio'; below the initials 'D.d.M.' and the date '1857'. Small marginal tear to l. D4 with no damage to the text, title page slightly soiled, a nice copy printed on a fine, crispy paper.A beautiful copy, complete with all the eight plates, of the extremely rare first edition, first issue, of one of the most influential music theory books of the sixteenth century. The book is dedicated to Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este.
The Renaissance musicologist Edward Lowinsky acknowledges Vicentino as "the greatest revolutionary of the sixteenth century [...] The epochal significance of his treatise… Read More