Author: TRYDELL (Rev. John):
Title: Two Essays on the Theory and Practice of Music. In the First are laid down the Principles of the Science. In the Latter are demonstrated the Rules of Harmony, Composition, and Thorough Bass. To which is added, A new and short Method of attaining to Sing by Note.
Description: Dublin: Printed for the Editor By Boulter Grierson..., 1766. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. 8vo, 195 x 120 mms., pp. xx, 140, disbound; lacks all 51 plates. Ellen T. Harris, in The Music Lover in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century England (Tufts Digital Library) writes that, 'John Trydell published his Two Essays on the Theory and Practice of Music with the hope of rendering "the knowledge of Music easy; and Composition more practicable than it seems to me it is among us at present." Trydell's strategy for making music easier was to construct a system based on geometrical reasoning (Kassler, p. 1024), in which he took great care, as he put it, "to avoid all obsolete Words, or such as are derived from other languages: and to speak as plain English, as the nature of the Subject would admit, that I may be understood by every English reader." [Trydell's essays were used for the article on 'Music' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1771, but never reprinted thereafter, since, as Kassler writes, "the opinion that music and geometry were congenial and inseparable was losing ground" (Kassler, p. 1025).]'

Keywords: music prose


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