Rebuilding the music of Greece and Rome from the sources
François-Auguste Gevaert’s two-volume work, published at Ghent in 1875 and 1881, reconstructs Greek and Roman musical systems, notation and instruments from classical sources.
The story
No recording survives of the music of ancient Greece and Rome, so anyone who wants to know how it worked has to rebuild it from the classical sources. François-Auguste Gevaert set out to do exactly that. He came to the problem as a Belgian composer and musicologist who directed the Brussels Conservatoire, a musician as much as a scholar.
Over two volumes, published at Ghent in 1875 and 1881, he explains how that music was organised into systems, how it was written down, what instruments played it and what earlier scholars had made of it, with printed musical examples so the reader can see what he means. It is technical, and in French, but it shows how a nineteenth-century musician went about recovering the sound of the ancient world.
Both volumes are here, in matching later bindings of brown half leather with raised bands and gilt on the spines, blue-grey marbled boards and gilt top edges. The bindings show minor scuffs and rubbed edges, and some page edges are uneven or toned; the folding plates and the gatherings have not been collated.
Details
- Date
- 1875 / 1881
- Publisher
- impr. de C. Annoot-Braeckman, Gand
- Binding
- half_leather: Matching brown raised-band half-leather spines with blue-gray marbled boards and gilt top page edges; later binding.
- Condition
- Matching brown half-leather hardcovers with raised gilt-decorated spines, blue-gray marbled boards and gilt top edges. Binding shows minor shelf scuffing and edge rubbing; some uneven page edges/toning visible. Both volumes present, 1875 and 1881, but folding plates and full gatherings have not been collated.
