Rare books, manuscripts, music, ephemera…
18th December 2019
Today we will take a break from our series of ‘first appearances’ of carols to bring you a delightful early Victorian gift book, with chromolithographed illuminations throughout: Joseph Cundall’s A Booke of Christmas Carols, illuminated from Ancient Manuscripts in the British Museum (London, Henry G. Bohn, 1845): ‘After Pickering, the publisher with the most devoted […]
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10th August 2016
It’s been a few years since I blogged about Tchaikovsky, but as I sang a movement from the following piece last night, it seems apt to write something today. This is a copy of the first edition of Tchaikovsky’s Liturgy of St John Chrysostom which, like his first suite for orchestra, was written in 1879. […]
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10th September 2013
20 Siberian folk-songs for solo voice with piano accompaniment from those collected in 1900 in the province of Irkutsk and the Transbaikal region by Nikolai Protasov … Published … by the Song Commission of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society (1902). The stunning chromolithographed cover was designed by V. P. Shneider. Nikolai Protasov (1865–1903), an active member […]
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1st May 2012
2764 guests, at a cost of £13,188 2s. 1d. (over £600,000 in today’s money), this is Victorian event management at its peak. Alexander II was visiting his daughter, Maria (styled here ‘Her Imperial and Royal Highness’, always a bone of contention with the British royal family), who had married Queen Victoria’s son, Alfred, at the […]
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