Author: BURNEY (Charles):
Title: A General History of Music, From the Earliest Ages to the Present Period. The Second Edition [volume 1].
Description: London, Printed for the Author: And sold by Payne and Son..., 1789, 1782, 1789, 1789. FIRST EDITION of volumes 2, 3, and 4. 4 volumes. 4to, pp. v [vi blank, vii - viii Contents], xviii, 501 [502 blank, 503 - 511 Index, 512 blank]; [iv], 597 [598 blank, 599 "Corrections and Errata," 600 blank, 601 - 610 Index]; xi [xii blank], 622 [623 - 633 Index, 634 Errata]; [iv], 1- 68, 67 - 70, 69 - 118, 117 - 128, 127 - 688 [689 - 700 Index, 701 Errata, 702 blank], engraved music throughout text, folding woodcut of "Egyptian Musical Instrument," folding plate of music in volume 1, one engraved plate in volume 2, recent quarter calf, buckram boards, new end-papers; lacks the portrait of Burney in volume 1, the frontispieces for volumes 2, 3, and 4, and 6 plates in volume 1. The first volume of Burney's History was out of print within a few weeks of publication, and Burney had decided by April of 1776 to prepare a second edition of the volume. The second edition of volume 1 takes account of a number of suggestions made by Thomas Twining. The "Dissertation" no longer features on the title-page of the second edition and becomes part of the Preface, while the "Questions and Answers" are transmuted into "Definitions." Many passages from the first edition are radically altered or omitted. When publication of the four volumes was completed in 1789, Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the reviewers. Writing in the February, 1790 issue of the Analytical Review, she said "Every lover of this captivating art, must thank the author, emphatically, for his unwearied researches, whilst the unimpassioned philosopher may coldly connect a more grand and comprehensive interest with the enquiry, and drawing metaphysical inferences from the ingenuity displayed in the progressive improvement of music, advance a step further into the terra incognita of the human mind."

Keywords: music prose


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