MUSIC. – William GARDINER. Music and Friends; or, Pleasant Recollections of a Dilettante. London: Longman, Orme et al., 1838-1853. 3 vols., 8vo (212 x 132mm.) Engraved leaves of musical scores. (Toning, browning and spotting to vol. 3.) Contemporary half calf to vols. 1 and 2, original blue blind-stamped cloth to vol. 3 (extremities rubbed and covers scuffed, upper joint splitting to vol. 3). Note: an English composer and diarist but primarily known for his influence in bringing Beethoven’s music to England. In the flight from Bonn at the advance of French troops in 1793, a chaplain, Abbe Döbler, fled to Leicester with the score of Beethoven’s Violin Trio in E flat in his violin case. William Gardiner met Döbler in Leicester and a private performance of the work occurred in a house three years before its publication in London. Provenance: John Chanter (bookplates to front pastedowns of vols. 1 and 2). – And a further four volumes related to music (including W.T. Parke’s ‘Musical Memoirs; Comprising an Account of the General State of Music in England’, 2 vols. in 1, 1830, 8vo, and Kreissle von Hellborn’s ‘The Life of Franz Schubert’, 2 vols., 1869, 8vo, and L.A.C. Bombet’s ‘The Life of Haydn, in a Series of Letters Written at Vienna. Followed by the Life of Mozart, with Observations on Metastasio’, 1817, 8vo) (7).