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LULLY (JEAN-BAPTISTE) Armide. Tragedie mise en musique par Monsieur de Lully... Sur Intendant de la musique de sa Majesté. M.DC.Lxxxvi, CONTEMPORARY MANUSCRIPT OF THE FULL SCORE, image 1
LULLY (JEAN-BAPTISTE) Armide. Tragedie mise en musique par Monsieur de Lully... Sur Intendant de la musique de sa Majesté. M.DC.Lxxxvi, CONTEMPORARY MANUSCRIPT OF THE FULL SCORE, image 2
LULLY (JEAN-BAPTISTE) Armide. Tragedie mise en musique par Monsieur de Lully... Sur Intendant de la musique de sa Majesté. M.DC.Lxxxvi, CONTEMPORARY MANUSCRIPT OF THE FULL SCORE, image 3
Lot 72

LULLY (JEAN-BAPTISTE)
Armide. Tragedie mise en musique par Monsieur de Lully... Sur Intendant de la musique de sa Majesté. M.DC.Lxxxvi, CONTEMPORARY MANUSCRIPT OF THE FULL SCORE,

29 March 2023, 13:00 BST
London, Knightsbridge

£7,000 - £10,000

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LULLY (JEAN-BAPTISTE)

Armide. Tragedie mise en musique par Monsieur de Lully... Sur Intendant de la musique de sa Majesté. M.DC.Lxxxvi, CONTEMPORARY MANUSCRIPT OF THE FULL SCORE, the complete opera, comprising a prologue and five acts, written in the hand of a copyist in dark brown ink on up to 12 staves per page, with the French text below each vocal line and some instrumental and tempo indications ("hautbois", "basse continue", "flutes", "doux", "lentement"), 12-stave paper printed in 2 6-stave systems with some manuscript additions, 315pp. (comprising title, 2-page dedication to the King signed "Lully" and 312 numbered pages), tear without loss to p.296, 315pp. (comprising title, 2-page dedication to the King signed "Lully" and 312 numbered pages), tear without loss to p.296, contemporary pigskin, titled in black ink on spine, stained, worn at edges with slight loss, hinges splitting, folio (335 x 220mm.), folio (335 x 220mm.),

Footnotes

A NEW ADDITION TO THE LIST OF RECORDED MANUSCTIPT FULL SCORES OF LULLY'S OPERA ARMIDE.

Armide was at the time considered to be Lully's masterpiece and it includes some of the best-known music in French baroque opera. It was also ahead of its time in that it portrayed the sustained psychological development of the eponymous protagonist Armide.

In Jean-Baptiste Lully: Armide: tragédie en musique, edited by Lois Rosow (Hildesheim, Georg Olms Verlag, 2003, p.324), Rosow lists ten early manuscript full scores of the opera, only two of whch are outside France. The present score is a copy of the first printed edition published by Christophe Ballard in 1686, in common with one other manuscript full score we have traced at auction (Sotheby's, 30 November 2011, lot 131). We are grateful to Lois Rosow, Professor of Music, Emeritus at The Ohio State University for informing us that "the handwriting bears a strong resemblance to that in Bibliothèque de Versailles, Manuscrit musical 81; the latter is a score of Pascal Collasse's Ballet de Villeneuve, copied in the workshop of André Danican Philidor for the Musique du Roi, ca. 1692".

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