Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre à jouer de la harpe. Avec des leçons faciles pour les commençans, des menuets allemands et italiens et autres jolis airs ; et la partition pour l'accorder avec les pédales et sans les pédales

The very rare first edition with a lovely frontispiece illustration of a young harpist beneath the charming quatrain: “La Harpe entre vos mains Silvie / Ne laisse rien à désirer / De vos beaux yeux : l'âme est ravie / Peut-on vous voir sans vous aimer !” [The harp in your hands, Silvie| Leaves nothing to be desired| A glance at your eyes thrills me| How could you not be admired?]. Engraved title within a circular frame surrounded by musical instruments, manuscript ex dono at foot. The work, including the text, is entirely engraved.
 
Contemporary half calf over marbled boards. Worming to inner margin of first six leaves very discreetly repaired.
 
The work begins with a brief history of the harp. This is followed by fourteen chapters on chords, the handling of the harp, arpeggios, and the use of the pedals. There are a number of transcriptions of popular airs and songs such as were dear to Corrette – most notably La Fürstemberg, Que vous dirais-je maman and so on.
 
Michel Corrette (1707-1795), well known to musicologists, is an important figure in 18^th century French music. Though he has not left any truly determining works – except perhaps the comic concerto based on Rameau’s L'Air des sauvages [The Savages’ Theme], which is still played regularly – his numerous musical activities and works help us better understand French music and musical tastes throughout the 18^th century.
 
In 1728, at the age of only 21 and freshly arrived in Paris, he published one of the first collections of French concertos. The French contribution to this major genre, developed in Italy, and key to the musical history of Europe, is very slight. Corrette was to be one of the only people to introduce it to France, along with Blavet and Leclair.
The official organist to the Prince de Conti and later to the Duke of Angoulême, Corrette was at the same time conductor of an orchestra (at the Saint Laurent fair, which inspired the famous Concertos comiques), a virtuoso violinist, harpsichordist and needless to say, composer. He was also a noted teacher and wrote a number of methodological works aimed at the students of his music school, affectionately known in Paris as the “Anachorètes” [lit: Corrette’s donkeys].
Very early on, Corrette made an effort to set down the musical forms of his time in order to pass them on and his first manuals, like Le Maître de clavecin [The Master Harpsichordist] (1753) did enjoy some success. If, in this respect, he was to join a instructional tradition following the example of Couperin, Rameau or Bach, one nonetheless feels with Corrette an encyclopedic wish to teach all the instrumental forms. Thus, he produced manuals for the cello, harpsichord, organ, flute, mandolin, guitar, and so on. Unlike those of a number of his peers, these manuals were not intended for the sole use of musicians but – a great revolution that he brought to bear in the musical world – also for beginners. The present book of instruction for the harp, like all his instructional works, takes into account all the different techniques, both French and Italian, but also German (not very highly regarded in France at the time). These correspond to the three great schools of music in 18^th century Europe; the Italian undoubtedly doing the most to revolutionize the writing of music.
With an eye to modernity, Corrette published his method for the harp though the instrument had only been being played for a few decades at the time. The harp had previously been abandoned because of its lack of chromatism and it took the invention of the double-row harp by the Italians and later the pedal (which was not introduced in France until 1749) for the instrument to see a resurgence of interest. It was quite quickly adopted in the aristocratic salons but without its own specific repertoire. It then enjoyed a growing popularity and major works for the instrument were to see the light of day in the first half of the 18^th century (Mozart, C. P. E. Bach).
The attention enjoyed by the harp in the 19^th century is well known, thanks to the technical modifications that were brought in from 1800 on. This method is thus a witness to the rebirth of the harp in France and is important testimony to the way it was played and the techniques for playing it at the end of the 18^th century.  
Published in a very small number of copies because of the novelty of the instrument, all other copies of this work seem by now to have disappeared.
We have not been able to find any reference to this rare edition in the major European bibliographies, nor at auction.