The Art of Playing on the Violin

The manuscript presented in facsimile edition preserves an incomplete version of Francesco Geminiani’s (1687–1762) most important and renowned treatise, The Art of Playing on the Violin (1751), and some excerpts of A Treatise of Good Taste in the Art of Musick (1749). Held in private hands for 250 years, the manuscript was acquired in 2007 by the Centro Studio Luigi Boccherini in Lucca and is still preserved there today. At first, it was thought to be an autograph, but new studies shed light on several incongruences that led scholars to consider it either a personal transcription of one of Geminiani’s pupil for private use or even a late copy.