Item #108075 The Poetry of various Glees, Songs, &c. as performed at the Harmonists. [and] The Poetry of various Glees, Songs, &c. as performed at the Harmonists. George Fryer.

The Poetry of various Glees, Songs, &c. as performed at the Harmonists. [and] The Poetry of various Glees, Songs, &c. as performed at the Harmonists.

1798. London: Printed at the Philanthropic Reform, 1798 [and] 1813.

2 works in one, 8vo, [4], viii, [5]–115, [1] pp., with an engraved frontispiece by William Staden Blake (cut down and mounted); vii, [1], 64; a little spotting in the second work, with inkspots to p. 13; some light foxing, a couple of short tears to the first two leaves in the first work; early nineteenth-century black morocco, all edges gilt. Occasional corrections and dates added in pencil, likely the dates songs were sung by the annotator.

§ First editions bound together (as are the copies held at the British Museum and Princeton). A book that is of interest to historians of music and to scholars of William Blake, the latter for the frontispiece signed “Blake sc. Change Alley” by William Staden Blake who was one of a number of William Blakes working as an engraver in London c. 1800. See Keynes, Blake Studies (2nd. ed.) chapter V “Engravers Called Blake”, p. 46 et seq.

The Harmonists Society was London's first formally organized glee club. “By the end of the eighteenth century, the fashionable nature of the glee ‘created a desire among amateurs to emulate more professionally constituted clubs. In London this led to the formation of the Harmonists Society. According to his own account, the principal mover behind the new club was R. J. S. Stevens [composer, and later Gresham Professor of Music], who at the start of 1794 was approached by “a few Musical Amateurs” who expressed to him a desire to have an occasional meeting at which they would “dine together and have vocal music afterwards..." (Robins, Catch and Glee Culture, p. 83, as quoted by Simon Beattie). Item #108075

Price: $575.00

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