Law, Andrew. The Art of Singing; in three parts: to wit, I. The Musical Primer, II. The Chistian [sic] Harmony, III. The Musical Magazine. Cambridge: W. Hilliard, 1803. Fourth Edition with Additions and Improvements, Printed upon a New Plan. [8854]
Full sheep, scuffed with small pull top of spine, joints good, old paper library label. Oblong 13 cm (5 1/4 x 8 3/4 inches), library name & withdrawn stamps on front paste-down, library stamp on title page, bookplate & withdrawn stamp of Young Folks' Library of La Junta, Colorado, on rear paste-down. 1806 ownership inscription in brown ink on ffep. Printed copyright statement tipped in behind title page, not included in pagination. (1)-24, 31-160, (1)-96, last few leaves bound out of order.
Defective: lacking three leaves of the Musical Primer, pp. 25-30, leaf 59-60 chipped with corner loss. There is a stub between p. 6 & 7 the same width as the tipped-in copyright slip; we are unsure if it is waste or if something was cut out. Nothing of the sort is mentioned in the precise collation described in Crawford. An exceptional copy, even with the defect.
This tunebook has three parts.
The title page for the book as a whole has the imprint Cambridge: W. Hilliard, 1803.
The title page for the Second Part has the imprint Windsor, (Vermont): Naham Mower, 1805.
The third part has Boston: Printed for the Author by E. Lincoln, 1805.
The first two parts of the volume have continuous pagination; the third part begins with new page numbers. The three imprints and the pagination scheme match what Crawford calls the third edition - in other words, this is how this volume is expected to be found.
Crawford identifies this as the true third edition, see bottom of p. 278 in his Andrew Law, American Psalmodist. The three missing leaves are the "Scale of Rules," and Lessons I-IV. He does not mention the copyright as tipped in but as the verso of the tp. This may be a print run performed before the copyright was secured, and then tipped in afterwards. The other item indicating a very early run (or possibly first) is the mistake in the title page, "Christian" is misspelled as "Chistian". It is corrected on the title page for Part Second. The book is printed with the long and sort "s".
Stanislaw 128. "The rudiments were widely copied by later compilers. 4th ed. was first to use four-shape system. Reverse faw and law shapes from Little and Smith's more popular system; no staff, note-locations approximate."
"Andrew Law's largest and most important work, the Art of Singing, is a collection of tunebooks composed of three different parts, issued in four editions over a period of sixteen years, and with inconsistent regard by the compiler for providing accurate bibliographical information on the title page of each item." Crawford, Andrew Law, American Psalmodist, pp. 269-70.
Andrew Law (1749-1821), b. Milford, Ct; one of the first Americans to write about music and the pioneer of a shape-note system of musical notation.
"Andrew Law was the most ambitious American psalmodist of the eighteenth century. He traveled the length of America, establishing singing schools in eleven states; he devised an original musical notation; he was the first American musician to become actively interested in copyright legislation; and, though not primarily a composer, he was his generation's most prolific compiler of tunebooks, publishing, in all, more than thirty separate items." - ibid., preface pp. xv.-xvi.
