PERRIN, [Pierre].

Les oeuvres de poesie, de Mr Perrin, contenant les Jeux de poesie, diverses poesies galantes, des paroles de musique, airs de cour, airs a boire, chansons, noels et motets, une comedie en musique, L?Entrée de la Reyne, et La Chartreuse, ou La sainte Solitude.

      Paris: Estienne Loyson, 1661. - 12mo (140 × 88 mm), pp. [xii] (including engraved title), 406, [2] (privilege), several mispaginations. Very lightly browned. Contemporary limp vellum, spine lettered in early manuscript "Poësies Heroiques". Binding soiled and lightly loose, front pastedown defective. A good, unsophisticated copy. First appearance of many of these verses and songs and of an important musical comedy acted before the King at Issy in April 1659: considered "le premier essai de ce genre de spectacle en France" (Gay). The collection also includes the words for motets sung at the marriage of the King?s brother Philippe to Henriette d?Angleterre (Charles I of England?s youngest daughter) in March 1661.Pierre Perrin was a central figure in musical and theatrical life at the court of Louis XVI, and was indeed an originator of the great French tradition of musical comedy. He founded the Académie Royale de Musique, which was to eventually become the Opéra de Paris but after a series of disastrous financil dealings he was imprisonned for debts and had to sell his privilege to his powerful and better remembered contemporary, Jean-Baptiste Lully. Perrin died in poverty. Cioranescu 4467; Gay III, 519.