Pignolet de Monteclair - Jephté - 1733

Major witness to the history of French Baroque music and 18th-century religious lyric, this work combines an original period score and a remarkable antique artistic binding.

JEPHTÉ.
Tragedy drawn from Holy Scripture. Set to music and dedicated to the Queen by Monsieur Monteclair.
First performed by the Royal Academy of Music on Thursday, February 28, 1732, and brought back to the stage on the first Thursday of Lent in the years 1733.
Third edition revised, enlarged and corrected.
In Paris, at Sr. Boivin, bookseller on Rue Saint-Honoré, at the Golden Rule. General score engraved folio. Price 20 livres in blank.

A folio volume containing superb pages of engravings of musical parts by L. Huet (with the text of the lyrics and the figured basso-continuo), opening with an elegant title page framed by a rich typographic border. The work includes the dedicatory epistle to the Queen, a mythological and Biblical prologue featuring Apollo, Polymnie and Terpsichore, as well as a simple Permission issued in the name of King Louis of France and Navarre authorizing Michel Pignolet de Monteclair to engrave and print his works.

Block of the book without its binding. Interior complete, and fairly well preserved despite the usual foxing and damp spots, testifying to the diligent use of this monumental score by musicians and connoisseurs of the time.

Michel Pignolet de Monteclair (1667–1737) offers here one of the summits of French sacred opera. Jephté is regarded as his masterpiece, praised for the boldness and modernity of its orchestration, the richness of its choirs, and the beauty of its recitatives.