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Music Manuscripts Missing from the Staats- Und UniversitäTsbibliothek, Hamburg

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Extract

A vast quantity of rare music books and manuscripts were lost during the Second World War, and while a substantial number has been rediscovered, many items remain untraced. In some cases the only information we have about such losses is found in early music catalogues. One library with invaluable information of this kind is the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Hamburg (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‘). The full extent of the Hamburg Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek's music losses has yet to be revealed in print, and it is in respect of a small component of these losses, namely, its music manuscripts, that I am concerned here.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 2002

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References

1 I should like to thank Dr Jürgen Neubacher, the Director of the Handschriftenabteilung of the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky, and other staff of the library, including Frau Helga Heim and Frau Marion Sommer, for their kind assistance during my visits to their library. I should also like to thank Dr Neubacher for providing relevant information, and-following my own multiple checking of the material-for kindly checking the citations in the section ‘Lost Music Manuscripts: References in Arrey von Dommer's Catalogue’. I should also like to express my gratitude to the Australian Research Council for its financial assistance.Google Scholar

For the recent publications, mostly concerning specific sources in the collection (some of them recently returned to the library), see: H. Gronemeyer, ‘Feierliche Übergabe der aus der DDR zurückgekehrten Hss, am 29, Nov, 1989’, Auskunft: Mitteilungsblatt Hamburger Bibliotheken, 10 (1990), 718; idem, ‘Musikbibliothek der SUB Hamburg kehrte zurück’, Auskunft: Mitteilungsblatt Hamburger Bibliotheken, 11 (1991), 179–81; Richard Charteris, ‘A Rediscovered Manuscript Source with Some Previously Unknown Works by John Jenkins, William Lawes and Benjamin Rogers’ Chelys, 22 (1993), 3–29; idem, ‘Newly Discovered Sources of Music by Henry Purcell’, Music & Letters, 75 (1994), 16–32, 659; Hans Joachim Marx, ‘Eine Wiederaufgefundene Serenata theatrale von John Sigismond Cousser und ihr politscher Kontext’, Rudolf Eller zum Achtzigsten: Ehrenkolloquium zum 80. Geburtstag von Prof. em. Dr. Rudolf Eller am 9. Mai 1994; veranstaltet vom Institut fiter Musikwissenschaft im 60. Jahr seines Bestehens am 11. Mai 1994; 575 Jahre Universität Rostock, 1419–1994, ed. Karl Heller and Andreas Waczkat (Rostock, 1995), 33–40; Jürgen Neubacher, ‘Hamburg: B. Sammlungen und Bibliotheken’, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Ludwig Finscher, Sachteil (2nd edn, Kassel, 1995), iii, cols. 1773–5, 1778–80; and idem, Die Musikbibliothek des Hamburger Kantors und Musikdirectors Thomas Seile (1599–1663). Rekonstruktion des ursprünglichen und Beschreibung des erhaltenen, überwiegend in der Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky aufbewahrten Bestandes, Musicological Studies & Documents, 52 (Neuhausen, 1997); Richard Charteris, ‘The Music Collection of the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Hamburg: A Survey of its British Holdings Prior to the Second World War’, RM A Research Chronicle, 30 (1997), 1–138; idem, ‘Further British Materials in the Pre-War Music Collection of the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Hamburg’, RMA Research Chronicle, 31 (1998), 91–122; Thomas Selle (1559–1663): Beiträge zu Leben und Werk des Hamburger Kantors und Komponisten anlässlich seines 400. Geburtstages, Mitteilungsblatt Hamburger Bibliotheken, xix (Herzberg, 1999), with essays by Joanna Carter, Holger Eichhorn, Frederick K. Gable, Gisela Jaacks, Jürgen Neubacher, Franz Josef Ratte and Barbara Wiermann; Otto-Ernst Krawehl and Jürgen Neubahcer, ‘Rückgabe kriegsbedingt verlagerter Handschriften und Drucke der Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky aus Tiflis (1996) und Eriwan (1998)’, Auskunft: Mitteilungsblatt Hamburger Bibliotheken, 19 (1999), 133–45; and Richard Charteris, ‘Thomas Bever and Rediscovered Sources in the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Hamburg’, Music & Letters, 81 (2000), 177–209.Google Scholar

2 For further details about Dommer, see: G. Zedier, ‘Arrey von Dommer (1828–1905). Musikwissenschaftler und Bibliothekar’, Lebensbilder aus Kurhessen und Waldeck 1830–1930, ed. Ingeborg Schnack, i (Marburg, 1939), Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Hessen und Waldeck, 20, pp. 92–5; Gaynor G. Jones and Bernd Weichert, ‘Dommer, Arrey von’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (2nd edn, London, 2001), vii, 453.Google Scholar

3 For more about Chrysander, see: A. Hyatt King, Handel and his Autographs (London, 1967), 13–14; idem, ‘Frederick Nicolay, Chrysander, and the Royal Music Library, The Monthly Musical Record, 89 (January-February, 1959), 13–24; Anthony Hicks, ‘Chrysander, (Karl Franz) Friedrich’, New Grove 2, v, 816–17.Google Scholar

4 Except for details of the recovered sources, the comments in the next few paragraphs draw heavily on those in Charteris, ‘The Music Collection of the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Hamburg’, 24.Google Scholar

5 Among the items in the second component of Chrysander's collection acquired in 1956 were many English music prints and manuscripts dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Google Scholar

6 The relevant records, entitled Fluchtgutlisten, are found without pressmark in the Bibliotheksarchiv, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky. For further details about these records, see Otto-Ernst Krawehl ‘Verlagert-verschollen-zum Teil restituiert. Das Schicksal der im 2. Weltkrieg ausgelagerten Bestände der Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg’, Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hamburgische Geschichte, 83 (1997), 237–77.Google Scholar

7 For details about the transportation of rare books and manuscripts that belonged to German libraries, including the Hamburg Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, to the Soviet Union in 1946, see Otto-Ernst Krawehl's article cited in the note 6 above, and Charteris, ‘Thomas Bever and Rediscovered Sources in the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Hamburg’, 177–8.Google Scholar

8 I am grateful to Dr Jürgen Neubacher for providing information about these sources.Google Scholar

9 See Charteris, ‘Thomas Bever and Rediscovered Sources’.Google Scholar

10 See Staatsarchiv der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, 361–5 I Hochschulwesen I Reg. Spez. C I 29a Band I; the latter documents are mentioned in Charteris, ‘Further Information about the Hamburg Purcell Sources’, 659.Google Scholar