Rare books

(Image from NYPL Digital Gallery)

Voltaire the author and father of the French Enlightenment—we know about him, of course. But this influential philosopher also loved handmade work.
Voltaire has a place in my heart, and I have devoted time as a librarian to cataloguing eighteenth-century books in The Martin J. Gross Collection of works by Voltaire and his contemporaries for the Library’s Rare Book Division. And so, on this most special of days, I want to share with you the following excerpt, from Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary, which illustrates his appreciation for the handmade:

“Physical experiments, ably conducted, arts and handicraft—these are the true philosophy. My sage…is he who, with his shuttle, covers my walls with pictures of linen or of silk, brilliant with the finest colors; or he who puts into my pocket a chronometer of silver or of gold.”

You’ll find this in the entry for Xenophanes (page 271, v. 7, in a 1901 edition of Voltaire’s collected works).

Happy Birthday, Voltaire!

According to an article in The Guardian this week, the University of Manchester Library will begin a project to digitize The Forme of Cury, a rare 14th century cookbook compiled by King Richard II's royal chefs.

The Forme of Cury is considered the oldest known cookery book written in English (cury is the Middle English word for cookery), and the digitization project, which will include other treasures such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, should be completed by 2009.

While the New York Public Library does not have the original 1390 book (it's on my wish list!), we do have a 1790 version of the book in the Rare Books Division. That London imprint is also available digitally through Eighteenth Century Collections online, one of our electronic resources. Lorna Sass' To the king's taste: Richard II's book of feasts and recipes adapted for modern cooking, a 1977 monograph that takes some of Forme's recipes and adapts them for modern usage, is also in our collection.

For more background on this historic book, one can read the short, but informative, essay featured on the British Library website.

The British Library's site also features some of Forme's recipes, such as the one printed below. And although Joan Nathan doesn't mention this dish in any of her cookbooks, the blend of honey and wine would make an interesting (and very different!) Rosh Hashana dish.

Tostee XX.IIII. XIII.

Take wyne and hony and found it togyder and skym it clene. and seeþ it long, do þerto powdour of gyngur. peper and salt, tost brede and lay the sew þerto. kerue pecys of gyngur and flour it þerwith and messe it forth.

Take wine and honey and mix it together and skim it clean. And seethe (boil) it for a long time, and add to it powdered ginger, pepper and salt. Toast bread and lay it thereto. Carve pieces of ginger, and flour it therewith, and serve it forth.

One of the more amusing books in the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts is a volume bluntly titled Freak Pianos (call number: Mus. Res. *MKDCC). Its author is C. Van Noorden, about whom I could find little, other than he or she flourished in England as a music and dance critic in the early decades of the 20th century. Articles by this person appearing in the Dancing Times can be found in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, and it is probable that the author is related to a few other Van Noordens who were active as musicians at the turn of the 20th century in England.

Freak Pianos consists of a brief text, followed by 18 leaves containing 20 images illustrating a variety of piano designs mentioned in the text. These images are a combination of drawings and lithographs - the latter apparently culled from 19th century journals or advertisements. It’s possible that Van Noorden kept these illustrations over the years as a curiosity.

Although I’ve known about this book for decades, only recently did I confirm that it’s a typescript for a published article with the same title that appeared in the English Illustrated Magazine (January 1905, p. 334-39). Happily, Google Books has it available in digitized form. A comparison of text between typescript and magazine shows only minor changes.

But this comparison shows that nearly half the illustrations were eliminated from the article. (Two of the illustrations in the article–the piano against the wall, and the piano combined with dresser–appear to have been excised from the book before NYPL acquired the typescript.) In addition, the published magazine (and its digitized form) is small, resulting a loss of detail.

In one case, the published article refers to two illustrations: “Mr. Hallett’s 1857 grand piano with a circular sounding board, over which radiate two, three or four sets of strings, so that the instrument might have two or more keyboards available for quartettes, etc. The illustration shows only two keyboards.” The single illustration in the published article shows an upright piano (complete with candle holders). The illustration that begins this blog entry was also intended to show Mr. Hallett’s invention. To my eyes, it suggests a conjoined twin.

The article has a somewhat primitive drawing of a woman in profile playing a “piano with perpendicular keyboard.” That was supposed to be the first of two illustrations; finally, here is the other:

Near the beginning of the article, Van Noorden speak of inventors’ “flights of fancy” in attempts to innovate and elaborate the design and construction of pianos, often combining it with other instruments and mediums. Here is John Day’s 1816 instrument with glass bells (although they look like glass rods to me):

Mr. Netwon’s piano of 1860 uses metal gongs instead of strings:

Though we may often think of typescripts as being little more than a draft for a published work, it often pays to examine them thoroughly. In the case of this article, examination reveals a gem of unusual illustrations that would be difficult to find elsewhere.

Welcome to the blog of the Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts of the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. It’s my intention for this blog to serve as a way to make the Music Division (and The Library in general) a more accessible and welcoming place by featuring some of the treasures and unusual items we have. I encourage feedback and dialogue on any of the topics I present.

So what better to open a blog that with the frontispiece from a famous book: Athanasius Kircher’s Musurgia Universalis, published in Rome (by Corbelletti) in 1650.

The Special Collections Department of Glasgow University Library possesses a unique hand-colored copy of Musurgia Universalis, and they’ve provided a nice but brief description on their website. Although slightly tangential to his subject, Edward E. Lowinsky provided a more thorough discussion of this page in his article “Ockeghem’s Canon for Thirty-six Voices: An Essay in Musical Iconography” (in Essays in musicology : in honor of Dragan Plamenac on his 70th birthday, edited by Gustave Reese and Robert J. Snow, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, c1969 - ISBN 0822910985, 155-80), of which the following is taken.

There’s an enormous amount of imagery here–a Renaissance-influenced combination of religious and mythological symbols. Its energy reminds me of a sanitized version of some of Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings. At the foreground left, Pythagoras leans on an explanation of his theorem as well as Zarlino’s senario, while the lady holding the cornet on the right side is Music. Both figures have musical instruments at their feet (ancient and modern), while the men inside the opening in the center represent the earthly “musical instrumentalis” and are working on new musical creations. Above them in the distance of the beach are nine satyrs and eight sea-gods. Slightly off to the right, a shepherd speaks to a cliffside with a quote from Virgil “Pascite ut ante Boves” (”graze, cattle, as before…”) which, by means of a dotted line, bounces back as an echo “…oves” - no doubt signifying Kircher’s extensive interest in acoustics. Further to the right of that cliff, a long stone staircase leads to a landing on which is perched Pegasus, ready to take flight in service to the muses.

The central sphere contains signs of the zodiac and, in addition to the author, title and publication information, is emblazoned with a quote from Job “Quis concentum coeli dormire faciet?” (i.e. “Who shall still the harmony of the spheres?”), while Apollo sits on top carrying a kithara in his right hand and panpies in his left.

Like rush hour on a New York City subway, it’s a very amusing and hyperactive artwork. But what interests me most is the musical quotation on this frontispiece. It’s a 36-part canon by Romano Micheli (the Latin indicates that the solution to the canon can be found on page 587). The 36 parts are broken down into 4 groups of 9 voices (i.e. 3 x 3), an hommage to the significance of the three-fold divinity, as well as to the nine muses. More significantly, this canon pays hommage to a famous “lost” work, a 36-voice canon by a master of mensuration, Johannes (or Jean) Ockeghem. Though Lowinsky was convinced he had uncovered the piece (Deo gratia), most scholars agree that the work is lost, and some acknowledge that there is little evidence proving that Ockeghem ever composed such a work.

Nevertheless, when seen in context of the entire book, Kircher’s Musurgia Universalis stands as a historical testament, an exhaustive and fascinating effort by one of the last polymaths to encompass the universe of musical knowledge.

The Music Division holds two copies of Musurgia Universalis (call numbers Drexel 2670-2672), both part of the Drexel Collection (a founding collection of The New York Public Library), while a third copy is held by the Rare Books Division.