ABSTRACT
‘Animadversion’ is both a prospectus for John Birchensha’s treatise Syntagma musicæ and an appeal for subscribers. It was originally issued in 1672 as a printed sheet. Subscribers were promised a bound copy of the book before Lady Day 1675 in return for every 20 shillings paid in advance. Only one exemplar of the sheet is known to survive; it measures approximately 330 × 230 mm, and is fol. 69 in the guard-book British Library, Additional MS 4388. The sheet appears to have been among the papers of John Pell which Thomas Birch presented to the British Museum in 1766, and may have been intended either for Pell’s own use – notwithstanding the fact that for much of his life Pell was notoriously hard up – or for him to pass on to a friend. Shortly after the ‘Animadversion’ was issued, an advertisement couched in similar terms appeared in the Royal Society’s journal the Philosophical Transactions.
