Folio. Modern mid-tan half calf with marbled boards, raised bands on spine in gilt-ruled compartments with dark red morocco title label gilt. 1f. (title), 1f. (table of contents and publisher's catalogue "Musick Just Publish'd . Compos'd by Mr. Handel"), 89, [i] (blank) pp. Engraved throughout. With pictorial bookplate of William C. Smith, noted Handel scholar and author (with Charles Humphries) of the definitive Handel: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Early Editions," to front pastedown. Binding very slightly worn. Minor foxing to title; occasional small stains and soiling to edges; discrete paper repairs to margins and lower right corners of pp. 1-16, 75-78, and 87-89; small inkstain and contemporary manuscript annotation "65/100" to p. 28; very small tears to lower margin of pp. 57, 61, and 87, not affecting music; First Edition of the complete work in full score; the only such edition published in Handel's lifetime. Smith p. 82, no. 6. BUC p. 430. Hoboken 5, 88. Hirsch II, 373. RISM H380. The first public performance of the complete work was given at Lincoln's Inn Theatre on 26 March 1731, to a libretto by John Gay (1685-1732). "Acis and Galatea, Handel's first dramatic work in English, had its models in the English pastoral operas by Pepusch (his colleague at Cannons), Galliard and others that had been given in 1715-18 at the Drury Lane theatre in rivalry to the Italian opera. . The work is unique in Handel's output (though he tried to recapture elements of it in such works as L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, 1739, and Semele, 1744); the influence of Purcell has been claimed, and musical ideas indebted to Keiser and others have been noted, but in approach it owes more to the Drury Lane pastoral operas than to any other source and in inspiration, conception and execution it remains wholly individual." Stanley Sadie in Grove Music Online. Acis and Galatea "is so perfect in style that we might take it for the climax of a long tradition, instead of a first essay in a new form and an unfamiliar language. As such it is a sufficient miracle; but it appears as a solitary peak only because its forebears have never been investigated. It is a vital link in the chain between the Purcellian masque and the mature Handelian oratorio." Dean: Handel's Dramatic Oratorios and Masques, p. 153. A fine lifetime first edition full score of Handel's Acis and Galatea, an influential and enduring work which went on to be arranged by Mozart in 1788. With distinguished provenance.
