Hortulus Chelicus Uni Violino Duabus, Tribus et Quatuor subinde chordis simul sonantibus harmonicè modulanti, studioso varietate consitus

Mainz: Bourgeat, 1688. Oblong quarto. Early vellum boards with borders decorative black stamping and cornerpieces with floral motif. 1f. (recto fine frontispiece engraving by I.P. Aubry depicting musicians, musical instruments and putti with formal gardens in background, verso blank), 1f. (recto title, verso blank), 1f. (recto preface, verso index), 129 pp. Music engraved throughout.

With attractive engraving of two putti, one holding a violin-like instrument and the other an open book of music, to head of first page of music.

Contains a total of 28 works for violin.

Binding slightly worn, soiled and warped; lower stained; worming to endpapers with archival repairs; lacking rear free endpaper. Slightly browned; minor defects to a number of leaves archivally repaired. First Edition. Of considerable rarity. BUC, p. 1054. RISM W187 (one copy only in North America plus six copies elsewhere). Wolffheim, 1531 (the second edition of 1694). Not in Hirsch. Kinsky: History of Music in Pictures, p. 180 (reproducing the engraving at the head of the first page of music).

"With Biber, Walther was the most important and daring of the late 17th-century violinist-composers in Germany and Austria who cultivated virtuoso techniques involving polyphonic writing, multiple stopping and the use of high positions: Fétis called him 'the Paganini of his century'. Whereas in using multiple stopping Biber was interested chiefly in scordatura, Walther emphatically rejected it, preferring instead the imitation of other musical instruments and of birds and animals. In doing so he was following in the footsteps of such composers as Biagio Marini, Carlo Farina (who had also worked at the Dresden court and whose Capriccio stravagante (1627) is a notable example of such pictorial music), Marco Uccellini, J.H. Schmelzer and even Biber himself. ...

In the Serenata a un coro di violini (Hortulus chelicus, no.28) Walther imitated a 'chorus' of violins, the tremulant organ, bagpipes, trumpets, timpani, the hurdy-gurdy and the guitar; Galli e galline, Scherzi d'augelli con il [sic] cucci and Leuto harpeggiante e rossignuolo, are among those works in which various birds are imitated." Isidor Saslav in Grove Music Online

"It is difficult to imagine the unaccompanied violin solos of Bach without the previous essays in multiple stops which the works of Biber, Walther, Bruhns, and others contain. ...

The chief technical advances of the German school can be summarized in three printed collections: Biber's 'Mystery' (or 'Rosary') Sonatas (c. 1674), consisting of fifteen sonatas with basso continuo plus an unaccompanied passacaglia; and two collections of Walther: the Scherzi of 1676 and Hortulus Chelicus of 1688. Collectively, these three works comprise solo violin pieces (plus continuo), many of which have descriptive interest. Formally they consist of sonatas, suites of dances, and variations. In the Horulus Chelicus some easier pieces are intermixed with those of great technical difficulty. ...

While Corelli developed the sonata to a classical perfection, the Germans paid zealous attention to the large-scale variation, probably as a natural device for the cultivation of diverse and difficult experiments in technique from one variation to the next. Walther's Hortulus No. 27 consists of fifty short variations over an ostinato of the descending C major scale, and (as Gustav Beckmann remarks) this work exhibits the whole art of the violin, hardly surpassed in the seventeenth century as a virtuoso piece." Boyden: The History of Violin Playing from its Origins to 1761, pp. 223-225.

A very good copy of a rare and important work.