"THE FIRST LARGE-SCALE DICTIONARY OF MUSICAL TERMS"

Brossard, Sébastien de: Dictionaire de musique, contenant une explication des termes Grecs, Latins, Italiens, & François les plus usitez dans la Musique. A l'occasion desquels on rapporte ce qu'il y a de plus curieux, & de plus necessaire à sçavoir; tant pour l'histoire & la theorie, que pour la composition, & la pratique ancienne & moderne de la musique vocale, instrumentale, plaine, simple, figurée &c. Ensemble, une table alphabetique des termes françois qui sont dans le corps de l'ouvrage, sous les titres Grecs, Latins & Italiens; pour servir de supplément. Un traité de la maniere de bien prononcer, sur tout en chantant, les termes Italiens, Latine, & François. Et un catalogue de plus de 900. auteurs qui ont écrit sur la musique, en toutes sortes de temps, de pays, & de langues. A Paris, chez Christophe Ballard, seul Imprimeur du Roy pour la Musique, ruë S. Jean de Beauvais, au Mont-Parnasse. 1703.

"True" first edition of "the first large-scale dictionary of musical terms". It was preceded by an incomplete pre-edition (1701) that survives in a single copy (Coover and Franklin). Printed here for the first time is a 900+-item list of writers on music, "a pioneer effort in the realm of music bibliography" (id.)

Brossard (1655-1730) was an entirely self-taught musician. He became maître de chapelle of Strasbourg cathedral and founder of an academy of music in that city, as well as a composer of his own published music. He was later in charge of the music at Meaux cathedral under the bishop and author Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704), the dedicatee of our book. His large music library was made over to the Bibliothèque Royale (now in the Bibliothèque Nationale) (Brossard).  

Details

One volume, 36.2 cms. x 24.6 cms., folio, pp. [114]. Signed: [ ]3 ā-īīī2 [2]īīī2 ōōō-āāāāāā2. Woodcut initial, typographical decoration, head-piece and tail-pieces. Musical type throughout. Light or medium browning, some foxing, printer's ink stains to bottom margins, sigs. ē1 verso-ē2 recto. Bound in 18th-cent. calf, filletted in blind, spine with gilt decoration and red goatskin gilt label, marbled pastedowns and endpapers, all edges red (binding rubbed and slightly worn and stained, cracking to top joint and some loss to head and tail of spine). 

Bibliography

François Lesure, ed., Écrits imprimés concernant la musique (Munich 1971) [= RISM VI/1] I, p. 180.

Yolande de Brossard, 'Brossard, Sébastien de'. Grove Music Online, 2001 (last accessed by us 18 March 2024).

James B. Coover, 'Dictionaries and encyclopedias of music'. Id., 2001 (last accessed by us, again, 18 March 2024).