Salve Regina a Due Voce ... Pr.10s:6. [Score]. Bound with Burney La Musica

Londra: Stampata per R. Bremner, nella Strand, 1773. 1f. (recto title within decorative border incorporating two angels on a bed of clouds holding an open book of music, verso blank), [i] (blank), 2-21, [i] (blank) pp. Engraved throughout. Title slightly browned and soiled; occasional small stains; blank verso of final leaf soiled. BUC p. 771. RISM P1388. Scored for two sopranos, two violins, and basso continuo.

Pergolesi "was a leading figure in the rise of Italian comic opera in the 18th century. ... According to Boyer, during his final illness Pergolesi composed the cantata Orfeo, the Stabat mater and (his last work) the Salve regina in C minor for soprano and strings (the cantata was in fact written before Il Flaminio). Villarosa, however, said that Pergolesi's last work was the Stabat mater, written for the noble fraternity in the church of S Maria dei Sette." Helmut Hucke and Dale E. Monson in Grove Music Online

Bound with:
Burney, Charles, ed. Palestrina, Giovanni Pierluigi da 1525-1594; Gregorio Allegri 1582-1652; and Tommaso Bai ca. 1650-1714
La Musica Che si Canta Annualmente nelle Funzioni della Settimana Santa nella Capella Pontificia ... Raccolta e Pubblicata da Carlo Burney Mus. D. ... Price 10:6. Londra: Stampata per Roberto Bremner, nella Strand, 1771. 1f. (recto title, verso blank), [iv] (typset "Preface by the Editor"), 41 pp. First Edition in this form. BUC p. 143. OCLC 27100429. Marginal staining and mild soiling to title and verso of final leaf.

Palestrina "ranks with Lassus and Byrd as one of the towering figures in the music of the late 16th century. He was primarily a prolific composer of masses and motets but was also an important madrigalist. Among the native Italian musicians of the 16th century who sought to assimilate the richly developed polyphonic techniques of their French and Flemish predecessors, none mastered these techniques more completely or subordinated them more effectively to the requirements of musical cogency. His success in reconciling the functional and aesthetic aims of Catholic church music in the post-Tridentine period earned him an enduring reputation as the ideal Catholic composer, as well as giving his style (or, more precisely, later generations' selective view of it) an iconic stature as a model of perfect achievement." Lewis Lockwood, Noel O'Regan and Jessie Ann Owens in Grove Music Online

Allegri was a composer and singer. "From 1591 to 1596 he was a boy chorister and from 1601 to 1604 a tenor at S Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, where the maestro di cappella was G.B. Nanino. According to Allegri's obituary he studied with G.M. Nanino (see Lionnet). He was active as a singer and composer at the cathedrals of Fermo (1607-21) and Tivoli, and by August 1628 he was maestro di cappella of Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome. He joined the papal choir as an alto on 6 December 1629, under Urban VIII, and was elected its maestro di cappella for the jubilee year of 1650. In 1640 his fellow singers elected him to revise Palestrina's hymns (necessitated by Urban VIII's revision of the texts), which were published in Antwerp in 1644. His contemporaries clearly saw him as a worthy successor to Palestrina and a guardian of the stile antico." Jerome Roche, revised by Noel O'Regan in Grove Music Online

Bai, also a composer and singer, "is first heard of on 20 October 1670 as an alto in the Cappella Giulia at S Pietro, Rome, which he served for the rest of his life. The account books from 1696 to 1713 list him as a tenor; he may have become a tenor shortly before this, but the account books for 1693-5 are missing. His long experience as a singer under such renowned directors as Benevoli, Ercole Bernabei, Masini and Lorenzani stimulated him to compose, and it may have been because of this that on 19 November 1713, shortly before Lorenzani died, he was himself appointed maestro di cappella, a post that he held for the 13 months until his own death. He was best known for his famous nine-part Miserere in falsobordone style. Except in 1768 and 1777 it has been sung regularly, together with Allegri's Miserere, by the papal choir during Holy Week (in 1821 Baini's Miserere was added). He was an adherent of the severe stile antico, but he also adopted an expressive manner more typical of his own day (as in the Miserere): the two styles are in apposition in his work, which includes choral parlando writing. Some of his works are for double choir." Siegfried Gmeinwieser in Grove Music Online

Burney's edition of Roman choral (and polychoral) works reflects 18th century interest in the study and performance of 16th century polyphonic masterworks. His preface is drawn from Adami and Bontempi, with his own reflections at the conclusion: "From this testimony, [Adami's Historia Musica, Perugia, p. 170] and from that of many other writers on the subject, it appears that harmony approached the nearest to perfection in the Pope's Chapel ... In the performance of music in parts, among which the melody is equally distributed, the sole ambition of individuals should be the success of the whole: the powerful should conform to the feeble, the swift to the sluggish: and however multiform the parts, the aggregate should differ from a seeming identity little more than the harmonics differ from a single sound, or the prismatic colours from a single ray of light, out of which they arise, and which, together, constitute unity. Aristotle defined friendship to be one soul in two bodies, and a chorus should seem to be many sounds proceeding from one origin."

Folio. 19th century dark green half calf with decorative blindstamping, marbled boards

Binding worn, rubbed, and bumped; spine abraded with upper and lower portions partially detached. Slightly worn and browned; occasional minor staining and soiling; some leaves trimmed at outer margin, not affecting music. Two attractively printed London 1770s editions reflecting public and scholarly interest in both galant Neapolitan music (exemplified by the celebrated Pergolesi) and 16th century polyphony in the vein of Palestrina.