The Theater of Music

The Theater of Music was designed for amateur musicians who wanted to sing at home the latest songs heard ‘at the Court, and Public Theatres’.

Books I and II of The Theater of Music (1685) were printed by John Playford the younger (d. 1685). Book III (1686) does not state the printer’s name, and Book IV (1687) was executed by Benjamin Motte, whose first known book this is. Although the four books of The Theater of Music were issued separately, Playford wrote in the preface to Book IV that it ‘may be joyn’d and bound with the three former’ to ‘make a compleat Volume’.

All of these printers used the Granjon type-face dating from the 1560s.