Traite des instruments a chordes / [Marin Mersenne]

The volume is the complete section on string instruments from Mersenne's Harmonie Universelle, and forms the most visually attractive and probably the most important part of this encyclopedic treatise on music, the most valuable source for the musical thought of the French early baroque. The title is from the half-title, and the volume is constituted by the first four books of the section devoted to instruments, although the remaining books [5-8] are dedicated to wind instruments, percussion and harmony. The different sections of the Harmonie were published separately, and scarcely any of the extant copies present their content in the same order. The present volume includes an 'epistre' and a 'Preface au lecteur' [p. i-vi], and the first four books, which are paginated continuously but with several mistakes in the pagination, which is as follows: book 1 p.1-[52] (last 6 folios numbered 41-46), book 2 p. 45-100 [116] (last 13 folios mispaginated), book 3 p.101-176 (p.165-174 mispaginated), book 4 p.117-228 [244]. The volume include numerous woodcuts and copper engravings of instruments, diagrams, musical examples and several complete pieces, some in tablature: book 2, dedicated to the lute, contains complete pieces by Boesset, Ballard, Rene Mesangeu, Francois de Chancy and Jehan Basset. Engravings depicting the author are laid down on end paper and half-title. Occasional light browning, rust marks and light stains, and a few errors corrected in ink.

RISM Ecrits, p573