Code de musique pratique

In-4° (2) ff. (inserted frontispiece and title page), XX-237 pages of text and 33 pages of engraved music ("Examples from the Code of Practical Music"): red morocco, raised bands on spine, compartments decorated with fleurons and corner tools, olive morocco title label, wide dentelle border on covers, arms stamped in center, turquoise tabis silk linings and endpapers, inner gilt roll, double fillets on edges, guilloché headcaps. Contemporary binding.

255 x 195 mm.

Rameau, Jean Philippe (1683-1764). Practical Music Code, or Methods for learning music, even for blind people, to train the voice and the ear, for the hand position with finger mechanics on the harpsichord and organ, for accompaniment on all suitable instruments & for the Prelude: With new reflections on the sonic principle.
Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1760.

Rare first edition.

As the foremost theorist of classical harmony, Rameau regretted at the end of his life having composed so much at the expense of deepening his musical art theory. The Practical Music Code, one of his very last writings, is addressed to singers and instrumentalists with the aim of passing on to them the conclusions he reached from a lifetime of theoretical and practical research: “True music is the language of the heart […] it is to the soul that music must speak,” are the fundamental axioms Rameau wished to transmit to musicians.
This Code further accentuated the disagreement between partisans of Italian singing on the one hand and the supporters of the French style on the other, of which Rameau, in spite of himself, was considered the leader—a quarrel in which the court delightedly took part.

The idea proposed by Rameau (Practical Music Code, 1760, pages 6 and 7), of using the fingers of one hand to exactly represent the five lines of the musical staff, is undoubtedly excellent, but there is no evidence, further in the Practical Music Code, that Rameau himself ever made any use of it.

Superb contemporary red morocco dentelle binding with the arms of the Marquis de Marigny, brother of Madame de Pompadour.
Abel-François Poisson de Marigny (1727-1781) was appointed general director of the King’s Buildings in the very year that Madame de Pompadour (born Jeanne Antoinette Poisson) became the king’s favorite. A great art lover, he was a pioneer of state cultural policy, encouraging history painting and, in architecture, the movement of return to Antiquity that led to Neoclassicism. He supervised the construction of the new Théâtre-Français (Théâtre de l’Odéon), redeveloped Place Louis XV (now Place de la Concorde), and planted the gardens of the Champs-Elysées. He also oversaw the construction of the École Militaire and commissioned works from François Boucher and Carle van Loo.

Provenance: Marquis de Marigny (1727-1781); Henri de Persan (manuscript ex-libris on a blank endpaper); Le Roi Demaillez (blindstamp at the top of the title page). Sotheby’s sale, 15 May 2012 no. 36.

Hirsch (British Library), I, 490; RISM Écrits, I, 682; Olivier, plate no. 2209.