MORLEY, Thomas (1557-1603). A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, set downe in forme of a dialogue. London: Peter Short, 1597.
2° (282 x 188mm). Woodcut title border [McKerrow 99], woodcut music, a few bars printed in red and black, woodcut diagrams and ornaments. (Title stained at right-hand border and slightly torn at corner, further stains to margins at beginning and end.) 18th-century mottled calf, red speckled edges (upper joints split). Provenance: Maggs 42 (pencil inscription) – Lord Kennet of the Dene (bookplate).
FIRST EDITION, followed by a second in 1608. Grove calls Morley ‘the true begetter of the English madrigal and the greatest influence on its subsequent development.’ His Introduction to Practicall Musicke is acknowledged as a work of outstanding scholarship, showing him to be fully conversant with all the Italian forms and with the aesthetic considerations behind them. Nevertheless, his own compositions actually favoured a lighter canzonet style, and what he achieved musically was a ‘remarkable synthesis of Italian style and English training’. Grove XII, pp. 579-585; R. Steele, The Earliest English Music Printing (1903), no. 161; STC 18133.
MORLEY, Thomas (1557-1603). A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, set downe in forme of a dialogue. London: Peter Short, 1597.
2° (282 x 188mm). Woodcut title border [McKerrow 99], woodcut music, a few bars printed in red and black, woodcut diagrams and ornaments. (Title stained at right-hand border and slightly torn at corner, further stains to margins at beginning and end.) 18th-century mottled calf, red speckled edges (upper joints split). Provenance: Maggs 42 (pencil inscription) – Lord Kennet of the Dene (bookplate).
FIRST EDITION, followed by a second in 1608. Grove calls Morley ‘the true begetter of the English madrigal and the greatest influence on its subsequent development.’ His Introduction to Practicall Musicke is acknowledged as a work of outstanding scholarship, showing him to be fully conversant with all the Italian forms and with the aesthetic considerations behind them. Nevertheless, his own compositions actually favoured a lighter canzonet style, and what he achieved musically was a ‘remarkable synthesis of Italian style and English training’. Grove XII, pp. 579-585; R. Steele, The Earliest English Music Printing (1903), no. 161; STC 18133.
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