Upright folio. Title; endorsement; 1-165 pp + Table de Matieres (2 pp). Engraved throughout, [PN] 208.  Contemporary soiled marble boards over green vellum. With minimal occasional foxing, overall a crisp and wide-margined copy.

"Created as the official violin method for Paris Conservatoire, collectively compiled by three important violinist-composers and faculty members. Largely consists of exercises for violin with bass-clef accompaniment, along with instructions on appoggiaturas, trills, and bowing. The text (about 15 pages) discusses how to hold the violin and bow, and discusses matters of expression, style, and taste." (Mark Katz, "The violin: a research and information guide," p. 134-135)

"It is significant of the changing times that Viotti, an Italian who came to Paris about the same time, nurtured the French school of Baillot, Rode and Kreutzer, a school that exerted a most important influence on violin technique in the nineteenth century. Paganini, the last of the great Italian violinists, was the star and symbol of nineteenth-century violin virtuosity, but the true teacher of the nineteenth-century violinist was Baillot, a Frenchman." (David Boyden, The History of Violin Playing from its Origins to 1761, Oxford 1965, p. 315).