Description
The Theater of Music
Ref
LA1
Categories
Collected Editions
,
Group A: Music for Plays 1660 – 1714
,
Music for London Entertainment
4 books, 1685 – 87; an anthology of 189 songs
Facsimile: Printed scores, Henry Playford and Robert Carr
Introduction by Robert Spencer
The Theater of Music
was designed for amateur musicians who wanted to sing at home the latest songs heard ‘at the Court, and Public Theatres’.
Books I and II of
The Theater of Music
(1685) were printed by John Playford the younger (
d.
1685). Book III (1686) does not state the printer’s name, and Book IV (1687) was executed by Benjamin Motte, whose first known book this is. Although the four books of
The Theater of Music
were issued separately, Playford wrote in the preface to Book IV that it ‘may be joyn’d and bound with the three former’ to ‘make a compleat Volume’.
All of these printers used the Granjon type-face dating from the 1560s.
