On microfiche
Vocal tutors
The earliest treatises written to educate the novice musician in the art of singing were still quite modest in scope. They provided little more than some basic music theory intended to support the very thorough practical training given by the music teacher. Examples of such works in this collection are Heyden (1540) and Faber (1586). It is only in the seventeenth century that we begin to encounter more definite commentary on the technique of singing, as can be seen in the work of Bacilly, Carissimi, Descartes, Speer and others. As the vocal soloist began to assume a more prominent role, however, authors found it necessary to devote more attention to voice production and to attaining virtuosity in voice leading. Later tutors thus often gave clear rules for performing the coloratura in diminutions and the usual ornaments. Tosi, followed later by Hiller, Mengozzi, Garaudé and others provide good examples of such precise instructions. The most important authors of the nineteenth century included here are Van Winter, Crescentini, Mannstein, Nehrlich, Sieber and Panseron. In many tutors, "solfeggi" or vocalizations were added for the purpose of exercise.
Instrumental tutors
A parallel development can be discerned in instrumental tutors. With the advent of an independent instrumental music at the end of the sixteenth century with its own striving for virtuosity, the first treatises for individual instruments also began to appear. The oldest examples in the microfiche collection date from the seventeenth century and concern especially the lute (Perrine), the gamba (Rousseau, Simpson), the recorder (Van Eyck) and the organ (Banchieri). Here too it was primarily the task of the teacher to train the pupil in the technique of playing. The tutors for guitar from this period (Derosier, Sanz, Millioni) were supplemented by subsequent treatises (Geminiani, Carulli, Castro, Giulani and others). Of the other plucked strings, the harp (Bochsa, Corbelin, Naderman, etc.), the mandolin and the cithern are represented.
As early as the seventeenth century, however, the increasing demands placed on professional musicians in particular led to a more elaborate formulation of instrumental technique trying to achieve artistic perfection. Questions concerning performance practice, such as phrasing, articulation and ornamentation were expressly included and illustrated by exercises drawn at first from the work of contemporaries. For the violin, the great treatises of Baillot, Cartier and Spohr have been included in the collection, as well as the tutors of Geminiani and Leopold Mozart (in respectively four and seven different editions). Baillot also published for the cello as did Cupis, Duport, Müntzberger and Romberg.
Naturally, a large part of the collection (89 titles) concerns tutors written for the harpsichord (Couperin, Frischmuth, Heck, Hess), the clavichord (C.P.E. Bach, Marpurg, Türk) and the pianoforte. For the latter the key names are Ricci, Adam, Clementi, Cramer, Czerny, Hummel, Müller, Pleyel and Steibelt. It is especially among these authors that we find a great many short tutors for amateurs and children, which began to be published in the course of the eighteenth century as the bourgeoisie took to making music. In the nineteenth century, however, under the influence of the cult of virtuosity purely technical exercises dominated musical training, as can be seen in the content of a great many tutors of this period.
A separate category is formed by books (31 titles) on performing the basso continuo. The tutors for wind instruments reflect quite strikingly the developments in the technical possibilities of these instruments. For the flute, important eighteenth-century authors have been included (Hotteterre, Quantz, Tromlitz), but also works of a later period (Devienne, Clinton, Nicholson, Tulou). This is also the case for the oboe (Fischer and Prelleur alongside Brod and Kastner), the bassoon (Ozi and Jancourt) and especially for the brass wind instruments. In addition to the tutors for horn, trumpet, trombone and tuba, works concerning less common instruments (flageolet, serpent and ophicleide, among others) have also been filmed. From a much later period a number of early tutors for the saxophone are included.