Booksellers at Blackwells Rare Books have having fun (although it was probably hard work as well) compiling a short list of twelve items to run alongside the verses of the Twelve Days of Christmas. They have come up with some innovative ideas such as Mervyn Peake's illustration for The Young Blackbird, 1953; Nicholson's An Alphabet provided the maids, and a John Piper edition for the eleventh day. Ten Lord a Leaping is to be found from Mrs Trimmer's A Series of Prints of Scripture History, c.1790 – although nobody knows the name of the Lord in question.

However it is the accompanying Shortlist 57 to which we refer today. The score of the Oratorio ‘Israel in Egypt’ by George Frideric Handel is available at £3,000. The Oritario was first performed in London in 1739. As was the practice at this time Handel recycled his music from his own previous works and relied heavily on musical parody, the reworking of other composers music. This work was written to attract paying audiences and as was played in a private theatre but as a commercial venture. This work has extensive choral passages, which the audiences were not used to and the opening dirge is about thirty minutes in length and may well have contributed to the failure of the work. Handel quickly revised the Oratorio omitting the requiem and adding more contemporary Italian arias.  This version of ‘Israel in Egypt’ is one of the revisions with the first part being omitted with the publisher having shortened some of the arias as well as some of the choruses.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s ‘Messa in ‘C’ or otherwise known as the Coronation Mass in C (K.317) acquired this additional name about a century after its composition when it was sung at the coronation of Leopold ll in Prague in 1791. The work has been printed several times before this edition which the cataloguer believes to be a Florentine piracy. There is also a piano reduction below the main score, arranged by the Florentine composer, teacher, and musical critic Ermanno Picchi. When the Hosanna section of the Benedictus is under way, the soloists begin the piece again, seemingly in the wrong place! Perhaps the most obvious reason for the mass's popularity was the similarity between the soprano solo Agnus Dei and the Countess's aria Dove Sono from Figaro which had been so successful. The work is valued at £750

Even is this short list the cataloguer still appears to have the Twelve Days of Christmas on his mind when from the Pear Tree Press Robert Coplande and John Guthrie’s The Manner to Dance Bace Dances number 57 of 100 copies appears for sale at £250. [With:] Noverre (Jean Georges) Letters on Dancing and Ballets. Translated by Cyril W. Beaumont from the Revised and Enlarged Edition published at St. Petersburg, 1803. C.W. Beaumont, 1930, the item is inscribed on the half-title ‘With all good wishes to John Guthrie from Mabel Dolmetsch, Sept. 15th 1935’. Guthrie had met the Dolmetschs whilst a teacher at Bedales School.