(MUSIC) John Stickney Gentleman and Lady’s Musical Companion

Sale 2675 - Lot 218

Price Realized: $ 1,000

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500

(MUSIC.) John Stickney. Gentleman and Lady's Musical Companion. [8], 212 pages. Oblong 8vo, contemporary calf, moderate wear; lacking free endpapers, incorrect 1770 date inked on title page in later hand, lacking pages 97-100, moderate finger-soiling; early owner's inscriptions on pastedowns. Newburyport, MA: Daniel Bayley, circa 1780

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Additional Details

First edition, second issue with corrected index and shortened imprint line, and pages 65-72 revised. It begins with an alphabetical index of tunes, "A Short Explanation to the Rules of Musick," and "Lessons for Tuning the Voice." The main text consists of 182 different pieces of engraved music, 12 of them by American composers, 3 of them appearing for the first time in this work ("Exeter," "Lanesborough," and "Mechias"). Many of the plates are repurposed from earlier tunebooks published by Daniel Bayley.

Britton's American Sacred Music Imprints 475 calls this "the last American sacred tunebook published before the Revolution" when it was first published in 1774. Soon after, the young author enlisted in the Massachusetts militia. After the war, he taught singing schools in several Massachusetts and Connecticut towns. Evans 13642; Sabin 91717. Provenance: early owner Ethan Kendall (1748-1834) of Sterling, MA, per March 1794 inscription (he requests that the book is "to be returned home in a fortnit"); the births of his ten children are listed on the rear pastedown. None of any edition traced at auction since 1954.