Author: SAINSBURY (John S.):
Title: A Dictionary of Musicians, from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time. Comprising the most Important Biographical Contents of the works of Gerber, Choron, and Fayolle, Count Orloff, Dr. Burney, Sir John Hawkins, &c. &c. Together with upwards of a Hundred Original Memoirs of the most Eminent Living Musicians; and a Summary of the History of Music. Second Edition.
Description: London: Printed for Sainsbury and Co....and sold by Longman..., 1827. 2 volumes. 8vo, 200 x 130 mms., pp. lxxii, 401 [402 blank, 403 printer's imprint, 404 blank]; [iv], 561 [562 text, 563 printer's imprint, 564 blank], including half-titles, contemporary cloth, with marbled cloth pasted over spines, paper labels; hinges cracked, but a reasonably good copy. John Sainsbury was a London bookseller and publisher. He compiled and published this work anonymously first in 1824, reissued it in 1825, then revised and expanded it for this second edition. New Grove notes that his "avowed intention was to publicize the merits of British musicians, whom he considered to have been unjustly neglected in the recent foreign dictionaries of Charon, Fayolle, and Gerber." He has relied on these works, but he began corresponding in 1823 with living musicians for details of their life and works and incorporates some of the results in this work. (Some of their replies can be seen in the Euling Library at the University of Glasgow.) While many of the factual elements of the work have to be juxtaposed with more recent scholarship, Sainsbury often provides insights into early 19th century perceptions of musical works that would seem absurd today: of Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte, he says "would have flourished better in the hands of Cimarosa; Mozart never succeeded when the triflings of love were to be depicted, that passion having been with him, throughout his life, either a blessing or misfortune."

Keywords: music biography prose


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