[First Edition] A General History of Music, from the …, Belfast

Four volumes of the four volume set - conditions the same for all 4 books unless noted: Full leather with speckled leather on front and back, 5 raised bands to spine with gilt tooling, an author and title/volume panel in red and black respectively, and gilt decorations around the border of front and back. Large books are tight, square, relatively sharp-cornered and free of major flaws or markings inside and out, other than some rubbing to corners, minor foxing to versos of the plates. Text block edges formerly gilt? but faded. Endpapers marbled. Interiors of books remarkably clean and free of foxing or spotting except as previously mentioned to the pages opposite of plates. First Edition of each of the volumes - 1776, 1782, 1789, 1789. Volume I includes a Dedication to the Queen of England written by Samuel Johnson, a friend of Burney's. Throughout the four volumes there are twelve engraved plates, including the four frontispieces. Engraved frontispieces in Volumes I, II & III by F. Bartolozzi after G.B. Cipriani and E.F. Burney, engraved frontispiece portrait in Volume IV by F. Bartolozzi after Sir Joshua Reynolds, and nine additional plates, two of which are folding, one of which is an etching of an Egyptian Musical Instrument, the other a musical sheet of an ancient Hebrew chant. Additional engraved musical illustrations, instruments and musicians throughout text. Charles Burney was an English music historian, composer and musician. He was the father of the writers Frances Burney and Sarah Burney, of the explorer James Burney, and of Charles Burney, a classicist and book donor to the British Museum. He was a close friend and supporter of Joseph Haydn. In 1776 the first volume (in quarto) appeared of Burney's long-projected History of Music. In 1782 Burney published his second volume; and in 1789 the third and fourth. The History of Music was generally well received, although criticized by Forkel in Germany and by the Spanish ex-Jesuit, Requeno, who in his Saggj sul Ristabilimento dell' Arte Armonica de' Greci e Romani Canton (Parma, 1798) attacked Burney's account of ancient Greek music and called him "lo scompigliato Burney" (the confused Burney). The fourth volume covers the birth and development of opera and the musical scene in England in Burney's time. It really was the first thorough history of music in the English language.