digital scores – Page 17 – Loeb Music Library

The Music Treasures Consortium proudly announces a new site designed to give access to selected music manuscripts and printed editions from six institutions in the United States and United Kingdom. The site is hosted by the Library of Congress on its Performing Arts Encyclopedia, and is available at:

http://loc.gov/musictreasures

(The scores pictured in this post represent a tiny fraction of the items available on the Music Treasures Consortium site; click any thumbnail to view the uncropped images.)

: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Heilig, [17–?]

: Johann Sebastian Bach, Fantasie und Fuge, BWV 906, [1815?]

: Ferruccio Busoni, Macchiette medioevali, [19–?]

The Consortium’s goal is to further music scholarship and research by providing access in one place to digital images of primary sources for the performance and study of music. Two examples may help to demonstrate the connections researchers can make through the site:

The 1741 autograph manuscript of Handel’s Messiah, from the British Library, can be easily compared with both the first published edition of the score, from the Loeb Music Library, and a copyist’s manuscript, ca. 1743-46, from The Morgan Library and Museum.
Scores from the Loeb Music Library’s extensive collection of Schubert first editions can be studied in tandem with manuscripts from the Library of Congress, the Morgan, and the Lila Acheson Wallace Library at Juilliard (Schubert in the Music Treasures Consortium).

: Claude Debussy, L’isle joyeuse, 1904

: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman, [1786-96]

: Maurice Ravel, Tombeau de Couperin, 1918

In this initial launch, online items range from the 13^th century – the British Library’s manuscript Harley 978, Musical, medical and literary miscellany, including ‘Sumer is icumen in'[…] – to the 20^th, by composers including Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Richard Wagner, Claude Debussy, Georges Bizet, Arnold Schoenberg. The site will continue to grow as Consortium members add more items.

Read more about Harvard’s contributions to the Music Treasures Consortium in this Harvard College Library News article.

: Arnold Schoenberg, Gurre-Lieder, 1920

: Franz Schubert, Deutsche Tänze und Ecossaisen, D. 783, 1825

: Richard Strauss, Elektra, 1908

Members of the Consortium include:

The British Library
Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library at Harvard University
Lila Acheson Wallace Library at the Juilliard School
The Library of Congress
The Morgan Library and Museum
New York Public Library

Initial planning for the Consortium was funded by Bruce Kovner. The MTC Advisory Board includes Christoph Wolff, Jeffrey Kallberg, Philip Gossett, and Laurent Pugin.

: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Zauberflöte, [1796?]

: Giuseppe Verdi, Falstaff, 1893

-Kerry Masteller

Our latest collection of digitized scores focuses on early 20th century works of musical modernism: operas by Busoni, Schreker, and Zemlinsky. As always, these and many other scores from our special collections can be found in our collection of Digital Scores and Libretti.

Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio Busoni. Detail, showing extent of annotations, Die Brautwahl. Mus 633.5.621 (click to enlarge)

1. Die Brautwahl. Klavier-Auszug von E. Petri [Leipzig? Breitkopf & Härtel? 1914?]. Mus 633.5.621

Busoni’s first opera, with a libretto by the composer based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s short story of the same title, from Die Serapions-brüder. This copy of the vocal score contains numerous cuts, corrections, and annotations – some pasted over the original score – which may represent a conductor’s revisions for performance.

2. Die Brautwahl: Orchester-Suite: Op. 45. Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel [c1917]. Mus 633.5.623

Ferruccio Busoni. Cover, Arlecchino. Mus 633.5.615

3. Arlecchino: ein theatralisches Capriccio in einem Aufzuge. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, c1917. Mus 633.5.615

A vocal score of Busoni’s Mozartian one-act number opera, centered on the acrobatic Harlequin figure of the Commedia dell’arte: his first stylistic foray into Junge Klassizität (Young Classicality). The work premiered on May 11, 1917, with Busoni’s Turandot.

Franz Schreker

4. Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin: Oper in einem Vorspiel und zwei Aufzügen. Wien: Universal-Edition, c1912. Mus 800.42.621

Schreker’s third opera, strongly influenced by Symbolism and later extensively revised to become Das Spielwerk. This copy of the score includes the spoken interlude “Des Burschen Traum in der Hütte des Meisters Florian” (“The Boy’s dream in the cabin of Meister Florian”), performed only for radio broadcast and not included in the libretto published in 1913.

Alexander Zemlinsky

5. Eine florentinische Tragödie: Oper in einem Aufzug : Op. 16. Wien: Universal-Edition, c1916. Mus 887.575.621

As he would do several years later in commissioning Georg C. Klaren’s libretto for Der Zwerg, Zemlinksy based his own libretto for Eine florentinische Tragödie on a work by Oscar Wilde: in this case, his unfinished play A Florentine Tragedy.

6. Kleider machen Leute; musikalische Komödie in einem Vorspiel und zwei Akten. Wien, New York, Universal-Edition, c1922. Mus 887.575.616

A vocal score of the revised version of the comic opera, based on Gottfried Keller’s novella Kleider machen Leute. Originally produced as a three act opera in 1911, this two-act revised version premiered in Prague in 1922.

– Kerry Masteller

Tag: digital scores (Page 17 of 22)

Announcing The Music Treasures Consortium

Newly-Digitized 20th Century Opera Scores

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Announcing The Music Treasures Consortium

Newly-Digitized 20th Century Opera Scores

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