Enter the musical world of Stuart and Georgian Britain, of concert-going, music makers and thinkers, printers and publishers. Written to accompany the upcoming collections-in-focus exhibition at the National Library of Australia, this book invites you into that life. A delight for lovers of music and print history, it features rare works by famous composers, theorists and philosophers, as well as portraits, exquisitely engraved tickets and trade cards. All items are drawn from the collection of musicologists and philanthropists Jamie and Michael Kassler. This book includes discursive captions, about such names as René Descartes, Henry Purcell, Johann Sebastian Bach and Joseph Haydn. Highlights include a broadside advertising an 1817 performance of Handel’s masterpiece, The Messiah, and a libretto of Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, still in its original sewn binding of 1803.
