THE PIANOFORTE IN THE CLASSICAL ERA

First edition, first printing. Hardcover. With a typed letter signed by the author. Publisher's original black cloth with gilt titles to the spine, in hardcovers in cyan blue dustwrapper illustrated with a painting of the Mozart family by Johann Nepomuk della Croce. Illustrated throughout with detailed black and white diagrams of pianoforte mechanisms and variations and 27 black and white photographs. A very near fine copy, the binding square and tight, clean and fresh. The contents, with the ownership name of harpsichordist, pianist, conductor and lecturer Alan Cuckston in pencil to the front endpaper, and a few pencil annotations to margins of the prelims, are otherwise clean throughout. Complete with the fine original dustwrapper that is without fading, loss or tears. Loosely laid in is a typed letter from the author to Alan Cuckston in response to a letter received.

In 'The Pianoforte in the Classical Era', Michael Cole, a harpsichord and fortepiano maker, examines the glories, and the shortcomings, of an extraordinary variety of old instruments, and looks behind their observable features at the aims of their makers, and the assessments of them made by contemporary players.