Méthode raisonnée pour passer du Violon à la Mandoline [avec manuscrit relié dans le volume]

Extremely rare first edition of Gabriele Leone's mandolin method, 67 pages of fully engraved text and music, including 26 dance pieces, 6 minuets, 2 duets, a sonata and a few melodies. Complete of its illustrated frontispiece and dedication plate, as well as full-page plate depicting a Neapolitan mandolin.
Brown half chagrin, spine ruled in gilt, speckled edges, 19th century binding. Skilful restorations to the spine, spotting and dampstains, old restorations with paper glued to inner margin of first two leaves. Bookseller's label glued to the title page, masking the place and publisher's name.
Bound in: a handwritten copy of Giovanni Fouchetti's method (Méthode pour apprendre facilement à jouer de la mandoline à 4 et à 6 cordes dans lequel on explique les différents coups de plume nécessaires pour cet instrument...) probably published a few years after Leone's, between 1770 and 1780. Signed by Louis Cerclier and dated July 6, 1836. Includes a full-page ink illustration signed by his relative Victor Cerclier depicting a Cistre, probably reproducing a plate from the published book.
Bound in: 22 pages of handwritten musical scores initialed by Louis Cerclier.

Exceptional reunion of two of the earliest mandolin methods. The handwritten copy of the second method was made in 1836 and signed by Louis Cerclier - probably a relative of Jules Cerclier, professor at the French Conservatoire national de Musique, who would publish a method for the same instrument in 1876.
Mandolin virtuoso Gabriele Leone played a particularly crucial role in popularizing the mandolin in France, which became a sign of refinement and good taste in the mid-18th century. He dedicated his method to his most illustrious pupil, the Duke of Chartres, future 'Philippe-Egalité' who famously voted for the death of his own cousin, king Louis XVI. Leone's seminal work is considered "the earliest known tutor for the four course violin-tuned mandoline" (Grove) and was intended to help violinists transition to mandolin, "from bow to feather" without the need for a teacher. Feathers were used as plectrums in those days, just as they had been for playing its ancestor the mandora. The former owner Louis Cerclier bound in a manuscript copy of another famous and very rare mandolin method by Fouchetti, as well as twenty-two manuscript pages of music scores for the mandolin.
Répertoire International des Sources Musicales, A/IL 1980.
The New Grove dictionary of musical instruments, II, 607.