Madame Lavoisier's Music Collection: Lessons from a Private Library of the Nineteenth Century

The music-related sources kept at Tarnów Municipal Library (Department of Early Prints and Nineteenth-Century Books) include manuscripts (PL-TAb 44, PL-TAb 45) which once belonged to the music collection of Wacław Rzewuski’s court ensemble in Podhorce (Pidhirtsi in Ukrainian). These manuscripts contain anonymously entered sonatas for flute and basso continuo, one of which has been recognised as the Sonata in E flat minor by Johann Philipp Kirnberger, previously only known from a Berlin copy. On the basis of comparative analysis with other extant sources, the Sonata in F sharp major found in the same manuscripts can also be attributed to Kirnberger.

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The Music Collection of the Staats- Und Universitätsbibliothek, Hamburg: A Survey of its British Holdings Prior to the Second World War

Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle ◽

10.1080/14723808.1997.10540978 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 30 ◽

pp. 1-138

Author(s):

Richard Charteris

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Second World War ◽

Late Nineteenth Century ◽

World War ◽

British Music ◽

Music Collection ◽

Late Nineteenth ◽

Italian Music ◽

Second World ◽

Partial Destruction

The extent of the music holdings of the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Hamburg, has never been revealed in print, and, except for a few recent publications dealing with a select number of its extant sources, there has been little comment about the losses it sustained during the Second World War (in 1919 the library's name was changed from ‘Stadtbibliothek’ to ‘Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek’, and in 1983 it acquired its present name ‘Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky‘). Prior to its dispersal and partial destruction during the Second World War, the Hamburg library's music collection compared favourably to other great music libraries of the day such as those in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. That the Hamburg library now possesses only a small quantity of its original holdings is a cause for much lament, but since detailed descriptions survive of all its pre-War materials, musicologists are afforded some remarkable insights into its sources, many of which have escaped scholarly attention; the descriptions are found in a manuscript catalogue compiled by the brilliant nineteenth-century bibliographer Arrey von Dommer (1828–1905). Dommer's catalogue reveals that in the late nineteenth century the Hamburg library possessed an extensive amount of music, both printed and manuscript, and that its collection of British music, though smaller than its holdings of German and Italian music, was very significant—the richness of its British materials reflects the particular interest of the collector Friedrich Chrysander (1826–1901), from whom much of the library's music was obtained.

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An Unrecorded Collection of Early Music Sources in Lampeter: Description and Annotated Inventory

Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle ◽

10.1080/14723808.2008.10541022 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 41 ◽

pp. 93-120

Author(s):

Barry Cooper

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Exact Match ◽

Early Music ◽

Music Collection ◽

Printed Music ◽

Private Collections

The library of University of Wales Lampeter, one of the oldest universities in Britain, collected many rare items, including music, during the first thirty years after its foundation in 1822. This music collection has never really been explored hitherto, and there are no printed references to it in the standard literature. The collection contains nearly 200 items, ranging from 1711 to the mid-nineteenth century but dating mainly from 1770–1820. Alongside the printed music are sixteen instrumental tutors and fifteen manuscripts. Judging by names written on some of the items, the collection was assembled piecemeal from various private collections. For nearly a third of the items, no exact match has yet been found elsewhere. These include previously unknown editions of music by Arne, Mozart and others; previously unknown works by composers such as William Burnett, Francis Linley and William Howgill; and even possibly unknown composers such as J. Gray and Henry Schroeder.

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Further British Materials in the Pre-War Music Collection of the Staats- Und Universitätsbibliothek, Hamburg

Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle ◽

10.1080/14723808.1998.10540981 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 31 ◽

pp. 91-122 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Richard Charteris

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Recovering the Creole Synthesis

10.5406/illinois/9780252037764.003.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Christopher J. Smith

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Working Class ◽

Musical Instruments ◽

The Body ◽

Race And Gender ◽

Blackface Minstrelsy ◽

Music Collection ◽

Similar Materials ◽

Instruments And Techniques ◽

And Gender

This book traces the roots of blackface minstrelsy—and the creole sounds, practices, and procedures that made minstrelsy possible—by analyzing the artworks, letters, sketchbooks, music collection, ephemera, and biography of William Sidney Mount, together with similar materials from some of his predecessors and contemporaries. It argues that nineteenth-century blackface is not a radical new invention, but rather the codification and theatricalization of a cluster of working-class performance idioms that were already familiar from the boundary zones of streets, wharves, decks, and fairgrounds. It also uses ethnography and ethnochoreology to reconstruct the behavioral contexts in which minstrelsy took place, along with its creole synthesis of music-and-movement, sound, and the body across boundaries of race, class, geography, and time. This chapter looks at a few preliminary examples that confirm Mount's relevance as a visual source for minstrelsy's musicological reconstruction, including information that he provides on musical instruments and techniques in the period, as well as attitudes about class, race, and gender.

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