De institutione oratoria libri duodecim [...] perfecto commentario illustrati a Io. Matthia Gesnero [...].

4to: [36]-640-[192] pp. (usual toning and spotting).

Contemp. half leather, spine with gilt label, red edges, marbled endpapers (rubbed, front joint splitting, marbled endpapers). Good copy.

Scholarly ed., with extensive indexes (192 pp.). It is famous for a very rare lifetime reference to Johann Sebastian Bach. In 1730 Johann Matthias Gesner (1691-1761) had been appointed Rector of the Thomasschule at Leipzig, where since 1723 Bach had been Cantor, and in a footnote to this edition of Quintilian (p. 61), he smuggles in a description which not only pays tribute to his colleague but also describes his virtuoso performance at the keyboard: "This, Fabius, you would deem to be wholly unimportant if, recalled from the underworld, you were able to see Bach – to mention only him, for not so long ago he was my colleague at St. Thomas’s School in Leipzig – playing with both hands and all fingers our clavier, for example, an instrument that comprises many kitharas. Or that fundamental instrument, the innumerable pipes of which are supplied with air by bellows, how here he hurries with both hands over the keys, and there with swift feet, and alone produces as it were hosts of quite different and yet fitting notes. If you saw him, I say, how, in a manner never attained by many of your kithara players and innumerable flautists, he not only sings one melody like the kithara player maintains his own part, but also pays attention to all simultaneously, and encourages from thirty to forty musicians to observe the rhythm and the beat, this one with a nod, the next by stamping his feet on the ground, the third with a threatening finger, the one his note in the top range, the other in the low range, and the third in the middle. How all alone in the midst of the loudest passages played by the musicians, though having the most difficult part himself, he notices none the less if something is amiss; how he holds them all together, giving a helping hand everywhere; and if they are assailed by doubt, he immediately restores order; how he feels the beat in arms and legs, scrutinising the harmonies with a sharp ear, alone bringing forth all the voices with his own limited throat. In all other things a passionate admirer of antiquity, I believe that friend Bach alone, and those who resemble him, surpass Orpheus several times, and Arion at least twenty times." Bach also dedicated his "Canon a 2 perpetuus" (BWV 1075) to Gesner. It has also been suggested by U. Kirkendale that Bach’s "Musical Offering" (1747) owes a great deal to Quintilian for its structure and that the sections are actually ordered according to the sequence set out in the "Institutio Oratoria". Title in red and black.
Ref. VD-18 1356837X. - Bach-Dokumente II. Fremdschriftliche und gedruckte Dokumente zur Lebensgeschichte Johann Sebastian Bachs 1685-1750 (Leipzig 1999) pp. 332 ff.
Prov. "Dr. Th. Mutter" (collector’s stamp). - Old ownership entries.