1789 by Forkel; and, concerning the French theatre, with many sidelights upon the opera, from 1750 by Joseph de Laporte (d. 1779), a series continued after his death by N. B. Duchesne and others (48 vols. to 1815); and by Louis François Beffara (d. 1838), a police-commissioner at Paris (35 vols. in MS., destroyed by fire in 1871).
Special studies were made on ancient music in 1770-81 by Pierre Joseph Roussier (d. c. 1790), and in 1778 by Giovenale Sacchi (d. 1789); and on mediæval music by Jean Benjamin de Laborde (d. 1794), a pupil of Rameau and long a favorite at court (5 vols., 1780-1, with a life of Raoul de Coucy, 1781), whose method was confused and untrustworthy.
Martin Gerbert (d. 1793), trained as a Benedictine and from 1764 abbot at St. Blaise, had access there to valuable MSS. (burnt in 1768), from which (and from researches in many other libraries in France, Germany and Italy) he compiled invaluable collections of mediæval writings about music (1774, '84) and of German liturgies (1776-9), which remained unique sources until improved and supplemented by 19th-century investigators.
Stefano Arteaga (d. 1799), a Spanish Jesuit who worked at both Bologna and Paris, a close friend of Martini, prepared a valuable work on Italian opera (1783), which was translated into German by Forkel (1789) and into French (1802).
An attempt was made in 1783 by Johann Sigmund Gruber (d. 1805), a Nuremberg lawyer, to draft a comprehensive sketch of the literature about music. In 1792 appeared the better work, of Johann Nikolaus Forkel (d. 1818), musical director at Göttingen, one of the first diligent students of historical sources, whose book was the basis of the later works of Lichtenthal and Becker.
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Edward Jones (d. 1824) made remarkable collections of old Welsh music (1784-1802), of Greek and Oriental airs (1804) and other national music. George Thomson (d. 1851) was indefatigable in gathering Scotch, Irish and Welsh melodies (17 vols., 1793-1841), provided with modern accompaniments. Irish music was collected in 1786 by Joseph Cooper Walker (d. 1810) and from 1796 by Edward Bunting (d. 1843), the latter writing also upon the history of the harp.
Père Amoit (d. c. 1794), a Jesuit missionary, drafted a volume on Chinese music (1780), largely from native sources, though with what accuracy is disputed. William Jones (d. 1794), a judge at Calcutta, wrote ably of Hindu music (1784).
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Out of the many musical biographies that now began to accumulate a few may be instanced, such as those on Vallotti by Sabbatini (1780); on Martini by Guglielmo della Valle (1784-5); on various composers and on Metastasio by J. A. Hiller (1784-6); on Handel by Reichardt (1785); on Marcello by Sacchi (1789); on Metastasio by Burney (1796); on Piccinni by Ginguené (1800); on Fasch by Zelter (1801); on Naumann by A. G. Meissner (1803-4); and on J. S. Bach by Forkel (1803),—the last being a work of decided scholarship. Autobiographies were given out by Schubart (1791), Spazier (1792), Ditters (1799), Reichardt (1805) and Dulon (1807).
