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24MO HUGUENOT PSALMBOOK (1659) WITH BOURGEOIS & PIERRE'S MUSIC
RICHLY GOLD-TOOLED CONTEMP. MOROCCO
[PSALMBOOK - FRENCH]. MAROT, Clement and Theodore de BEZE. Les CL Pseaumes de David. Mis en Rime Françoise, ... Les nottes de la musique sont mises sur un clef, a la commodité des chanseurs, par Jean Pierre. Musicien.
Amsterdam, Paulus van Ravesteyn, 1659. 24mo in 8s (11.5 x 5.5 cm). French-language metrical psalmbook with miniature diamond-head music notes (the 5-line staff measures less than 3 mm), title-page with a woodcut of King David, 2 woodcut tailpieces, 1 woodcut decorative initial letter and a decoration built up from fleurons. Contemporary French(?) red morocco, richly gold-tooled boards and spine (à petit fers), gilt edges, headbands in white and blue-green, lacking fastenings. Lacking 2 leaves of the 4-leaf confession of faith (wholly lacking in some copies).
| Orders and Information | € 1250 |
Seventh copy located of a lovely little French-language Calvinist psalmbook using the tunes (mostly by Louis Bourgeois) of the Geneva editions of 1542-1562, in a finely and richly gold-tooled contemporary binding. Following the 150 psalms come two hymns ("Les Commandemens de Dieu" and "Le Cantique de Simeon"), an alphabetical index, prayers (plus the ten commandments), a catechism, "Oriaison pour dire en la Visitation d'un Malade" and the confession of faith of the French Reformed Church. All the music is written with a C-clef on the centre line of the staff and transposed so that it uses either one flat, or no flats or sharps (a system introduced by Dutch musicians ca. 1650). The title-page indicates that the music was adapted by "Jean Pierre," and the title-page of the same publisher's 1658 edition of Dathenus's Dutch version indicates that its music was adapted by the same person, there called "Jan Pietersz." He has not been further identified. Jan Pietersz. Sweelinck (1562-1621), organist of the Dutch Reformed Old Church in Amsterdam and the greatest Dutch composer of all time, published his four- to eight-part harmonizations of Bourgeois's music in 1604-1621, perhaps the greatest monument to Dutch Reformed music, but this seems to be coincidental.
The music type is the smaller of the two cut by Christoffel van Dijck, and its punches survive at Museum Enschedé in Haarlem. Though often described as a 16mo or 32mo, the book is in fact a Crown 24mo with three quires per sheet (four leaves to the sheet in the long direction and six in the short direction, giving a tall and narrow format, horizontal chainlines, and the watermarks divided over the heads of four leaves in one out of three quires).
The red-morocco binding (11.8 x 6.4 x 2.5 cm) is richly gold-tooled with about 175 impressions of about 10 different stamps, and double fillets. The front and back boards show a panel design with a central vertical strip made from a flower stamp within fillets, and an outer frame (also within fillets), perhaps made from a roll with circular openings but filled in with five kinds of separately tooled rosettes, some apparently built up from smaller stamps. The space between the central strip and outer frame is filled with a repeating pattern of stamps intermeshing so that the two-millimetre space between them forms a decorative design itself. The spine is gold-tooled in its five compartments, on its four raised bands and at its head and foot.
Most of the last two leaves of the four-leaf confession of faith (quire 2F) have been torn out, along with a small piece of its second leaf. The published descriptions of the six other copies located suggest that three lack this confession of faith entirely, while three include it (the catchword "CON-" at the foot of 2E8v shows that the publisher planned its inclusion, but it may have been omitted or removed from copies of people who followed a different confession). The book is otherwise in very good condition and almost untrimmed (one bolt partly unopened on the fore-edge), with the title-page showing minor spots and slight wear, and with an occasional minor spot elsewhere. The binding lacks the two fastenings (one can see where the four small catch-plates were attached) but is otherwise very good, with minor wear to the spine and hinges. The free endpapers have been removed. A lovely early French-language Dutch psalmbook in a popular small format, in richly gold-tooled contemporary morocco.
