Communications

This column provides a forum for responses to the contents of this journal, and for information of interest to readers. The editor reserves the right to publish letters in excerpted form and to edit them for conciseness and clarity.

 

To the Editor,

I would like to respond to the late Calvin Elliker's discussion of two guitar methods by Phillis, one of which was recently discovered in the University of Michigan's music library, in his article, "Bibliographical Footnote to Benton and Halley: Discovery of Jean-Baptiste Phillis's Méthode courte et facile (Notes, March 2002, pp. 491-503). Contrary to Dr. Elliker's assumption, there is at least one other surviving exemplar of Phillis' Méthode courte et facile. In fact, RISM A/I (Einzeldrucke vor 1800, ed. Karl Schlager, 13 vols. to date [Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1971- ], 13) lists one in the library of the Conservatorio di Musica S. Pietro a Majella, Naples, Italy (RISM PP2008A). As far as I have been able to ascertain, with the generous help of Charles Reynolds at the University of Michigan's music library, the two exemplars are identical, except that the final page is missing from the Naples exemplar (or, at least in the copy of it that I have received).

In dating the two Phillis methods under discussion, Dr. Elliker draws on information from Benton and Halley's Pleyel book, concluding that the Méthode courte et facile was published in 1803, and the Nouvelle méthode pour la lyre ou guitarre à six cordes in 1799. Most likely, however, these datings are incorrect. Benton and Halley refer to an advertisement of the Nouvelle méthode, appearing 29 April 1799 in the Journal typographique et bibliographique. The text of the advertisement is not reproduced, but, although I have not reviewed the original advertisement myself, I strongly suspect that it actually refers to the Méthode courte et facile, and that Rita Benton somehow misfiled the information. My reasons for questioning the datings are:

According to Philippe Lescat (Méthodes et traités musicaux en France 1660-1800 [La Villette, Paris: Institut de pédagogie musicale et choréographique, 1991]), Phillis' Méthode courte et facile was advertised in the Journal des théâtres, 15 April 1799 (Lescat quotes the text of the advertisement, thus excluding a misattribution). That date's proximity to the date of the other advertisement arouses suspicion. Although possible, it is, nevertheless, quite improbable that two different methods by the same author would have been issued simultaneously. The improbability is supported by the widespread plate numbers of the two methods. Although plate numbers, especially of the French publishers of that period, often are incoherent and therefore of limited value for dating purposes, certain conclusions may in this case be inferred from them. A third Phillis work, published by Pleyel, the Etude nouvelle pour la guitare ou lyre, bears plate no. 203. It was also advertised in April 1799, as Dr. Elliker points out. The Méthode courte et facile bears the succeeding plate no. 204, and, as demonstrated above, appeared the same month. The Nouvelle méthode, however, bears the much higher plate no. 435. This strongly suggests that it was issued at a different time from the two preceding publications. A close study of the Benton and Halley Pleyel book reveals that, although there were occasional inconsistencies in Pleyel's use of plate numbers, he, nevertheless, generally assigned them serially. According to Anik Devriès and François Lesure (Dictionnaire des éditeurs de musique français [Geneva: Minkoff, 1979], I:129), Pleyel's plate no. 435 can be dated 1802, whereas the plate nos. 203 and 204 correctly belong to 1799. The 1802 date of the Nouvelle méthode also accords with the fact that it is for the six-string guitar or lyre, whereas the previous Méthode courte et facile of 1799 was for a five-string instrument, with only a brief reference to the six-string lyre. Contrary to Dr. Elliker, I do not believe that the two methods "were created and published with different...