Description: The collection of music printed before 1825 in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, is one of the most important in the British Isles, particularly for its holdings of late seventeenth and eighteenth-century music. Many of the books are from the library of the Museum's founder, Richard Fitzwilliam, 7th Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion and of Thorncastle (1745-1816), one of the finest collections of later eighteenth-century music that not only continued to grow in the early nineteenth century but also survived intact. This in itself makes the collection a fascinating monument in the history of musical taste, which is here catalogued for the first time.
Review Quotes: "...the generally high quality of Dr. Rumbold's citations and eleven handsome illustrations, may be argued to be quite what the original owner would today have wished for." D.W. Krummel, Analytical & Enumerative Bibliography