Recueil de Fables Choisies Dans le Goût de M. De la Fontaine

Abstract

The title continues Sur de petits airs & Vaudevilles connus notés à la fin pour en faciliter le chant. Not in Bodemann. Six books of fables on 322 small (2½ x 5) pages. Notice that both the texts and the organization of the fables is original. Though the book follows La Fontaine, the six books of fables seem not to be organized according to the pattern of La Fontaine's twelve books, and the texts seem redone with a special eye towards providing an appropriate meter for the music. After the texts, there is a ten-page AI. Following a royal permission to publish comes finally the special feature of this little book: 32 pages of musical notation, apparently fitted to the fables. These pages contain some hundred different musical arrangements, usually of two or three lines. The notation system in these pages is surprisingly close to ours. The introduction to each fable in the volume indicates which air is appropriate for it.