Search Results: Music from W. C. Baker Rare Books & Ephemera

New York: Oxford Uniiversity Press, 1958. xiii,[3],272 pp. Publisher's tan paper over boards, front cover pictorially stamped in black, in pictorial dust jacket. Rubbing and light scuffing to dust jacket, with small closed tears at upper edge and early pencil graffiti on rear panel and penciled price revision in front inner flap. Fine in a good to very good dust jacket. Olive Wolley Burt (1894-1981) was an American journalist, teacher, writer, and folklorist, best known for her works in juvenile literature and for the present work, her only book written for an adut audience. Burt had a lifelong fascination with true crime stories, noting that in her childhood her mother clipped "mournful verses from newspapers and saved them in a scrapbook" and would sing dark lullabies to her children. While workinig at the DESERET NEWS in Salt Lake City during the late 1940s and 1950s, Burt began to compile research on American murder ballads, leading to the publication of this extensive work, which in 1959 eanred a… Read More

1976. Pen and ink and wash on paper. Printed titles and lyrics pasted to liner sheets. Approximately 12 1/2 x 12 1/2 inches (images), 15 x 14 1/2 inches (sheets). Cover art dated, "26.i.76-3.ii.76" (i.e., begun January 26, 1976, and completed February 3, 1976). Crop marks and other notes on all three sheets in the hand of the artist. Liner-notes sheets mounted to board. Tape remnants and residue in left margin of cover sheet (not affecting image), remnants of framing tape at top edge of cover image sheet verso; light soiling and minor stains on verso. Light soiling at edges of liner-notes sheets. The original art accompanying the album of Vienna-born composer Michael Mantlers jazz-rock settings of six of Edward Gorey's tales, sung by British psychedelic rock pioneer Robert Wyatt: "The Sinking Spell," "The Object-Lesson," "The Insect God," "The Doubtful Guest," "The Remembered Visit," and "The Hapless Child." The cover art includes images derived from each of these stories, making it the only known… Read More

[London, 1968]. Folio (14 x 11 1/4 inches). [1],1-117 pp. Manuscript sheet music, inscribed and signed on the final page by the composer, "End | London 7 April 1968 | Tyringham-Cleveland-London 1966-1968 | John Stewart McLennan." Occasional manuscript corrections in pencil. In cardboard plastic-comb binder, manuscript paper cover label. Covers moderately worn, nearly all of binding comb perished. Contents toned, especially at edges, else fine. Overall very good. Original holograph musical score for the unpublished SONATA FOR ORGAN, by 20th-century American composer John Stewart McLennan, Jr. (1903-1996). McLennan was the son of the Canadian senator of the same name (1853-1939) and the American writer Grace Seeley Henop Tytus McLennan (1875-1928). He was born in Tyringham, Massachusetts, at Ashintully, his maternal family's estate. He acquired that property in 1937 and lived there for the remainder of his life. After the estate's Georgian-style mansion was destroyed by fire in 1952, McLennan moved into… Read More

[London]: Lowndes, Printer, [1808]. Broadside, approximately 11 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches, untrimmed. Portion of bottom line of text unprinted. Small remnants of paper tape on verso, else fine. Broadside advertising the twelfth performance of the opera, KAIS, OR, LOVE IN THE DESERTS, at Drury Lane, starring and produced by the renowned English tenor, John Braham. John Braham (ca. 1774-1856) rose from poverty and orphanhood in London to the heights of European opera, where he celebrated as one of the great voices of his age. As a British Jew, he also represented a major shift in Jewish status and social potential in the late Georgian era, becoming not only an artist of acclaim but also eventually the father-in-law of several English aristocrats. KAIS was based on the ancient Arabian love story of Layla and Majnun, which had been adapted into a famous work by Persian Poet Nizami Ganjavi in the 12th century, which in turn became the source for numerous later poets and mystics throughout the Middle East and… Read More