Recueil de Romances

Paris: Chez Pascal Taskin, et al 55 leaves of plates including engraved frontispiece portrait. 33 x 26 cm. Red paper covered boards with leather spine and leather title label to front board; gilt tooling to spine; all edges gilt. Later typed index laid in. Wear to head of spine and corners, with 20 mm chip to tail of spine. Some splitting along sides of backstrip. Foxing throughout interior. Tearing along plate marks on a few leaves, with 10 cm strip missing from fore edge of one leaf. Although his name is largely unknown now, Jean-Baptiste Roucourt (b. 1780) would have been fairly well known in Brussels in the early nineteenth century. In addition to being a composer, Roucourt was in charge of the musical review in the 'Journal des Pays-Bas'. In 1812, he started a school of music which would later become the Conservatoire Royale de Musique in 1832. This binder's volume of his Romances contains twenty-seven pieces which are mostly published by the celebrated harpsichord and piano maker, Pascal Taskin. Bound by Millet Papetier on rue Montmartre in Paris, the number of pieces in this collection certainly rivals the size of the collection of Roucourt's music spoken of in Candace Bailey's book Charleston Belles Abroad: The Music Collections of Harriett Lowndes, Henrietta Aiken, and Louisa Rebecca McCord. . Hard Cover. Very Good.…