Saint Lambert's Principles of the Harpsichord of 1702 was the first tutor for harpsichord to be published in France. It draws upon the dance-oriented harpsichord style developed during the reign of Louis XIV by such masters as Jacques Champion de Chambonnierès, Louis Couperin, and Jean Henry d'Anglebert. In subject matter it ranges from the fundamentals of music through questions of meter and tempo to particulars of harpsichord technique and ornamentation. Because of its broad scope it is an important source of information about both late seventeenth-century French performance practice and music theory. It provides a good complement to Francois Couperin's well-known book l'Art de toucher le clavecin of 1717 in that it deals with the musical style of the generation preceding Couperin and includes subjects not discussed by him. Although nothing is known about Saint Lambert himself, it is clear from this work that as a teacher he was thorough, sympathetic, and open-minded. His book is deserving of a place on the shelf of anyone, professional or amateur, who is interested in the music of the Grand Siècle. For this first English edition, Rebecca Harris-Warrick has added a substantial introduction and full annotation throughout the text [Publisher description]

Covers every aspect of the harpsichord and its music, including composers, genres, national styles, tuning, and the art of harpsichord building.

Revised and expanded, A Performer's Guide to Seventeenth Century Music is a comprehensive reference guide for students and professional musicians. The book contains useful material on vocal and choral music and style; instrumentation; performance practice; ornamentation, tuning, temperament; meter and tempo; basso continuo; dance; theatrical production; and much more. The volume includes new chapters on the violin, the violoncello and violone, and the trombone—as well as updated and expanded reference materials, internet resources, and other newly available material. This highly accessible handbook will prove a welcome reference for any musician or singer interested in historically informed performance.

Saint Lambert's Nouveau traité de l'accompagnement de clavecin, de l'orgue, et des autres instruments of 1707 supplements his earlier harpsichord treatise, Les Principes du clavecin of 1702. The Nouveau traité is a method book specifically designed for the accompanist rather than the solo performer. It offers practical suggestions to help the accompanist play the correct harmony without having to read all the notated parts at the same time. Saint Lambert discusses accompanying from unfigured and partly figured basses, and his was one of the first attempts to codify bass progressions into specific formulas, for which he assigns appropriate harmonies. He describes possible departures from the usual rules of accompaniment and examines performance techniques used by "tasteful" accompanists in order to create not merely a correct but an artistic accompaniment. John Powell presents Saint Lambert's text in a readable English translation with musical examples in modern notation. He compares Saint Lambert's text in a readable English translation with musical examples in modern notation. He compares Saint Lambert's concepts of realization with those of contemporaneous sources and traces the influence of this treatise on later authors.

Thomas Salmon (1647-1706) is remembered today for the fury with which Matthew Locke greeted his first foray into musical writing, the Essay to the Advancement of Musick (1672), and the near-farcical level to which the subsequent pamphlet dispute quickly descended. Beneath the unedifying invective employed by Salmon, Locke and their supporters however, serious and novel statements were being made about what constituted musical knowledge and what was the proper way to acquire it. This volume is the first published scholarly edition of Salmon's writings on notation, previously available only in microfilm and online facsimiles.