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\[music\]

Susan Clermont:

My name is Susan Clermont. I'm one of the music specialists in the
Reference Section of the Music Division. And today I consider it a real
privilege to be presenting to you a segment of the Music Division's
collections that are in many ways the most unheralded, but definitely
not unimportant, and, in many ways, unsurpassed. This segment of
materials includes our pre-1800 general collections or what we refer to
as the "case," or the rare materials. Unlike some of the other Library
\[of Congress; the Library\] divisions, the Music Division has custody
of its rare materials. In fact, we're the only special format division
to be granted custody over all materials pertaining to it. So, as Sue
\[Vita\] mentioned earlier, alongside our classified books and music
scores, we have holograph manuscripts, correspondence, iconography,
periodicals, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. She gave you the list.

At the very beginning of the 20^th^ century, Librarian of Congress
Herbert Putnam understood that choosing the right chief for the newly
established Music Division was absolutely critical for the realization
of his plan for a national library. So, in 1902, he met and hired Oscar
Sonneck, who was an eminently qualified bibliographer, scholar,
musician, collector and administrator extraordinaire, who embraced and
expanded the Library's vision to create a world-class music library that
would affect the musical life of our nation. I begin with this
historical preface because it was between 1902 and the Second World War
that Oscar Sonneck and his early successors, Carl Engel and Harold
Spivake, focused their attention on building the foundations of our
collections, the very materials that I have chosen to display today.
Together, these individuals managed to acquire incunabula, early primary
sources, and a body of pre-1800 imprints on music that is estimated at
about two-thirds of all such books printed about music before 1800.

The first group of objects displayed on the tables to my right feature a
few of the earliest items held by the Music Division. The first item is
a single vellum leaf that dates from the 10th century and it features
the liturgy and music from the Feast of the Nativity of Saint Lucia,
celebrated on December 13. This leaf offers an excellent example of
staffless neumes. Now let me explain.

Notation as we know it today, we have our five lines and our four spaces
and the notes on the staff and time signatures and rhythms and markings,
whatever. There was no notation in the 10^th^ century. From a
contemporary account we know that the average 10^th^ century singer had
to spend a minimum of ten years just memorizing the thousands of chants
that made up the Catholic liturgy. Within those chants, there were some
set formulas, or "cells," often found at the introduction, the middle or
the endings of a piece, that at least provided the musical pillars, or
supports, for the singer. You can see some of those on this manuscript
at the endings when you go look at the object. They're little letters
that are a set of vowels that stand for the "in saecula saeculorum amen"
at the end of each prayer. That's a standard ending of certain musical
forms that go along with them. So rather than writing them out, that's
what that means on that manuscript.

By the 10^th^ century, we find the addition of neumes to the liturgy.
Now neumes were signs, if you look at the very top line there at the top
of the text, they're just little squiggles. They represent cheironomic
gestures, these are what the choirmaster would use if he's directing his
choir, what direction the tune is going. Is it going up? Is it going
down? It's very simple. These neumes were neither designed to read
through new melodies nor to supplant the oral traditions. They were
merely mnemonic devices although they did eventually evolve into
something much more. This leaf that's on display is an example of St.
Gaul notation, St. Gaul being the site in Switzerland of one of the most
prominent Benedictine monasteries that flourished in the 10^th^ century.

The Music Division has over 70 early manuscripts that chronicle the
history of notation as well as music of the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance. Some are single leaves; many are complete books. Some books
can fit in your pocket, others are extremely large, they're intended for
an entire choir to read, but together they provide a wonderful resource
for early music scholarship. To support this early music scholarship,
the Music Division has an unsurpassed collection of theoretical
treatises, writings by contemporary music scholars who attempted to
synthesize the musical practices of their day and offer an overview of
the historical theory underpinning the music.

The earliest book about music in our collections originates from about
1150 and the title of it is "De Musica." This is a page from "De
Musica*.*" In this treatise, a monk named John gives us, the readers of
the 21st century, one of the clearest explanations about the concerns
and habits of a 12^th^-century practicing musician, as well as
explaining issues about early notation, church modes, which is what that
wheel is about \-- that's modal ranges. If you go beyond a portion of
that circle, you're throwing yourself into another mode and that's not
going to be correct that way, so that's telling you where to sing, what
vocal range to sing in, and he even ventures into a discussion on
singing in two parts. This is a "must read" for all students studying
medieval music.

I've also selected for display two Renaissance imprints, one is sacred
and one with secular music. The sacred imprint is of Palestrina's" First
Book of Masses," published in 1572. As many of you know, Palestrina is
remembered for his exemplary style of church music, a style that
expressed the spirit of the Counter- Reformation and was ultimately
embraced by the Catholic Church. He's here, the close-up of Palestrina,
he's the one kneeling, presenting his Masses to the Pope, and there's
one of the examples of the Kyrie. Obviously by the 15^th^- 16^th^
century, we've got our staff, we've got the notes. Much of the notation
is in place.

One of the first examples of printed music, the "Hamronice musices
odhecaton A," published in Venice in 1504 by Ottaviano Petrucci. This
volume includes a collection of 96 of the most popular 15^th^ century
chansons and other secular pieces. Petrucci's music, his music printing,
was splendid. You'll see that the presswork was so meticulous that he
was consistently able to achieve perfect register of notes, staves and
text, though, at least initially, the three separate impressions were
required. There's the example that I have shown "Adieu mes Amore" by
Josquin, and not a note is off. It's just remarkable for something that
early that it all lines up. Both the Palestrina and the Petrucci are
examples of our remarkable collection of pre-1700 musical imprints, what
we have in the M1490 class. This was a very well planned, and now it's a
very comprehensive, collection with first editions of madrigals and
frottola, motets, Masses, by every major composer of the Renaissance and
the early Baroque.

Accompanying these two Renaissance imprints is a unique, handwritten
codex containing 13 individual music treatises authored by the most
renowned theorists. This entire manuscript was hand copied in the late
15^th^ century by a single Benedictine monk in Venice named Johannes
Franciscus Preottonus, and, judging by the pages, this was indeed a
labor of love. It took him probably about 15 years to copy all of the
treatises. This is one. You can see the name on the top line,
Marcherttus de Padua, that was the name of the theorist.

I have another example. This is taken from a chapter from Guido of
Arezzo's "Micrologus," it's a very famous treatise. This is the opening
page of a book on music by Peotonus's friend, the English theorist, John
Hothby. And preceding Hothby's text is probably one of the most dramatic
realizations of the Guidonian hand in manuscript form. He probably did
that because it was opposite John Hothby's opening page.

By the time Sonneck left the Music Division in 1917, he had identified
and purchased well over 79,000 volumes for our general collections. Four
years later, in 1922, early 1922, after it had become glaringly apparent
to Librarian Putnam that Sonneck would not return to the Library, the
chief's position was offered to Sonneck's friend, Carl Engel. And in the
1920s and 30s, one of Engel's special interests was organizing and
augmenting the collections of music tablatures. The results of his
efforts is an extraordinary collection of rare and unique volumes that
have captivated the interest of researchers worldwide.

I've selected two books to display from our collections \-- the first is
a self-published work, titled "Capricci a due stroment" by the Italian
composer, lutenist and theorbo player, Bellerofante Castaldi. That's the
first engraving. This is self-published; he did the engravings, he
composed the music and he did the publication. Castaldi was reportedly
one of the most colorful and outspoken musicians of his day. His
satirical writings frequently resulted in imprisonment or banishment,
but he was an impeccable performer and, from what I've read, a
first-rate composer.

In the "Capricci" of 1622, there are nine duos that include an
instrument called the tiorbino. This is a small theorbo that's
supposedly tuned an octave higher and it's very rare to find music for
this instrument. I'm almost wondering \[low audio\] between the two
players, one on the instrument \[low audio\]. It's a curious engraving.
This is the first piece and you can see with the tablature, the rhythms
all written on the top. It's a piece for a battle. And you even if you
just tap out the rhythms, the eighth note on the top, starting in the
battle, followed by a quarter note \[inaudible\]. So you can almost hear
them \[inaudible\]. This is what the tablature looks like. And later on
in the book, there's actually an engraving of Mr. Castaldi himself.
That's him.

In contrast to Castaldi's Italian tablature is a manuscript of German
organ tablature, copied in the late 16^th^ century by Erasmus Hofer of
Austria. This book contains 101 transcriptions of motets and vocal works
from the Renaissance. Its overall value is greatly enhanced by the fact
that 15 percent of the musical selections in this volume are considered
unique. No concordances have been identified for them. The example is
the title page. It's all hand done; over the period of about 20 years,
he copied these. There's the example of the tablature. It's from a motet
by Orlando di Lasso. The largest object on display on my tables, to the
right, is the holograph manuscript of a \[the\] "Cantata, No. 9," by
Johann Sebastian Bach. I apologize, I do not have an image. It's hard to
take digital photographs when you have the glare of the Mylar
\[reflective sheet\]. So you'll see it over there.

Although the Music Division has never made the systematically targeted
acquisition of the music of J.S. Bach or the scholarly literature
devoted to the composer's life and works one of its major priorities,
the Library has inevitably assembled over time a sizeable collection of
Bach's music and Bach-related materials. For the researcher coming into
the Library to survey the manual and online card catalogs, they'll
retrieve well in excess of 10,000 entries under the name of J.S. Bach.

The collections have two areas where they're particularly strong. The
original and early editions of Bach's music and an exceptional
collection of arrangements and transcriptions of Bach's music by other
composers. We have an exceptional manuscript source for the French
suites BWV 812 through 817, in the hand of Bach's pupil, Johann
Christoph Altnikol. Probably some of you have played it. My second
example has \-- this is the "Notenbuch des Signor Kittel." It once
belonged to Johann Christian Kittel, one of Bach's last students. And
this one is important in that the Bach scholars have identified this
volume as potentially significant as it's still virtually an unknown
source. So we expect people to start coming in to give that one an extra
look.

The most precious Bach items in the Library are clearly the autograph
scores of the two Bach cantatas, BWV 9 and 10. On display is Cantata No.
9, "Es ist das Heil uns kommen her," "Salvation has come down to us."
It's the first Bach manuscript of any importance that was acquired by
the Library in 1931. It's composed for the sixth Sunday after Trinity.
The manuscript has no title page, only a superscription in Bach's hand
on the first page of music. You can look for that when you go to see the
manuscript. It has the initials, J.J., which was typical of Bach's
manuscripts \-- *Jesu Juva*, or Jesus Help, at the beginning.

We know from Bach's first biographer, Johann Forkel, that it was his
son, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, who took possession of this manuscript
after his father's death. In 1773, when Wilhelm Friedemann found himself
in difficult financial circumstances, he offered to sell Forkel an
entire year's worth of his father's manuscript cantatas, close to 70 in
all, including our "No. 9." But apparently Forkel didn't have sufficient
funds to accept this offer, either. But he did convince the young Bach
to accept a small sum for the privilege of examining these manuscripts,
several of which he copied.

Six years later, the young Bach sold the manuscripts for 12 thaler \--
about \$9. The whereabouts of Cantata No. 9 from that point, 1778, was
unknown until the early 20^th^ century, when it resurfaced in the
collection of Dr. Werner Wolffheim, from whom we purchased our
manuscript. When the plans for a systematic development of the resources
of the Music Division were carried into effect, opera immediately
received a very considerable share of the attention. And perhaps it was
not coincidental that this genre was a special interest of both Mr.
Sonneck and Mr. Putnam.

Barely five years after his tenure as chief, Sonneck had established an
unrivaled archive of opera scores and libretti. This in great part was
due to the serendipitous offer in 1908 to purchase an important
collection of over 12,000 opera libretti from Albert Schatz of Rostock,
Germany. This is an example of Franscisco Cavalli's "Xerxes." I'll give
you a little information about that.

The acquisition of the Schatz Collection required extensive
collaboration. We only had a certain amount of money in the budget and
this went beyond that amount of money. So he needed to collaborate with
Putnam and with Congress itself, which authorized a special
appropriation for its purchase. Less well known, but in its own way even
more remarkable, is the collection of more than 100,000 pieces of
manuscript materials representing Schatz's notes that contained diverse
and unique information on the history of opera. So passionate was
Sonneck on acquiring this collection that he offered, and I quote, "to
forgo \$1,000 of my yearly allowance for the next five years," just to
purchase this collection.

On display are two items from our opera collections. The first is this
libretti, a libretto from the Schatz Collection, of the opera "Xerxes,"
composed in Venice by Franscesco Cavalli in 1654. And adjacent to the
libretto is a transcription of the full score for Cavalli's "Xerxes
copied by one of the Library's scribes. Sue mentioned that we sent
scribes over to different European libraries to make copies of special
manuscripts or special early imprints of operas that weren't available
commercially.

We copied this in this in 1915, from the 1695 manuscript copy by
Francois Fossard held at the Bibliothèque Nationale. According to
Sonneck's notes, the first performance of this work took place in the
Gallery of Paintings in the Louvre for the wedding celebration of King
Louis XIV and Marie Therese of Austria in 1660. My reason for choosing
this is that back in 1995 there was an exhibit here from the
Bibliothèque Nationale called "Creating French Culture: Treasures from
the Bibliothèque Nationale de France," and this was one of the items,
the 1695 manuscript that we went over to copy, here it is 80 years later
came back to us and was on exhibit here for a while at the Library.

The Music Division's collections of autograph scores and copyists'
manuscripts from the 18th century, many representing works from the late
Baroque and early Classic periods that have never been published are
without peer. One of the most substantial collections of 18th century
instrumental music was a group of 200 works that came in 1910 from the
Berlin firm of Leo Leipmannssohn. A large number of these manuscripts
have ties to Mannheim, a city associated with the birth of the early
classical symphony. The one that we have here is extremely rare, in fact
it's unique, is a symphony in E major by, we know him as Carl Stamitz,
on here I believe it says Carlo Stamitz. It exists nowhere else. There
are several other examples like this, and for the most part we have the
parts for these, these works \[and\] chamber works, symphonies,
concertos. And it's interesting a lot of the handwriting apparently on
the covers of these \-- there's research being done on these
inscriptions and designations because they're manuscripts of Joseph
Haydn bearing identical inscriptions and in the same hand. So there's
work to be done.

\[low audio\]

Okay. I guess the last work I'm going to talk about, since it's Mozart's
year, a couple of Mozart's items. Throughout the year 2006, the Music
Division has joined in the celebration of Mozart's 250th birthday.
Forming the cornerstone of the Library's Mozartiana are 12 autographed
music manuscripts that span the composer's creative life. In addition to
these we have three nonmusical autographs, including a letter from the
Mozart to his sister, another to his famous father Leopold, and a
fragment from his diary.

Complementing the Library's early engravings of the child Mozart is a
unique piece of early Mozartiana, recently rediscovered by the reference
staff. We know from the literature that as a child prodigy, Mozart was
scrutinized by several enlightened observers who authenticated his
talents in their subsequent reports on him. One such account was
rendered by Londoner Daines Barrington, who lived from 1727 to 1800. In
June of 1765 Leopold Mozart invited this learned gentleman to his London
apartment so that he might witness firsthand and scientifically assess
his son's musical abilities. And after Mozart flawlessly completed his
tests and then abruptly ran off to play with the cat, an overwhelmed
Barrington metaphorically depicted this young prodigy as, quote, "an 8
year old who stood 7 feet tall." The manuscript of Daines Barrington, of
his beautifully narrated account of a very remarkable young musician is
on display over here. It was published later in 1771 and again in 1781,
but we have the manuscript of this visit to the Mozarts.

And the last item I'd like to speak about is the Mozart manuscript on
display.

There it is. Doesn't look like Mozart, huh?

Who could forget the climactic scene in the film adaptation of Peter
Schaffer's "Amadeus" when Constanza Mozart offers a large folder of her
husband's manuscripts to Salieri? Salieri first viewed them with a sense
of awe, and then dread, thinking that it was bad enough that this
creature wrote such extraordinary music, but he found it
incomprehensible that his manuscripts revealed no signs of revision.
With rage and frustration he could only deduce that Mozart composed the
music in his head and then simply, like taking music dictation, just
transcribed what was already finished.

The Library's autograph of Mozart's "Sonata for Piano and Violin," K379,
does not fit the description of a pristine score. In fact it's messy. It
makes use of multiple colored inks, different paper types,
superimpositions, and reordering of musical contents. Yet it is this
manuscript that should amaze rival or admirer alike. In a letter from
Mozart to his father dated April 8, 1781, he confesses that this sonata
was, and I quote, "composed last night between 11 and 12 pm. But in
order to be able to finish it, I wrote out the violin accompaniment for
Brunetti and I retained my own part in my head." This is a one-hour
sonata. And beautifully done, it was performed last May. It's an
incredible piece of music. After performing the unusually technical
keyboard part from memory the next evening, Mozart put the notes in his
head onto paper, using the darker ink, and adding the additional leaf,
which was the different paper, to accommodate the keyboard part for the
final variation.

Some people ask, at the very bottom, you see there's a stamp on our
manuscript from the Austrian National Library, and the first question
people will say is, "How'd you get that? \[Laughs\] It should be in that
library." But apparently this manuscript belonged to a family; their
name was Bondy. And tragically most of the Bondy's treasures were
targeted and confiscated by the Nazis in the 1930s. Their artwork went
to the salt mines in Linz and the music manuscripts were incorporated
into the Musiksammlung of the Austrian National Library. The Bondys
managed to get much of their work back and on June 18, 1947, the music
manuscripts were officially de-accessioned from the Austrian National
Library and returned to their rightful owners, who then sold them to the
Library of Congress.

If you have any questions after the other \-- or, do \--

Male Speaker:

\[Inaudible\] the fact that you've got a significant amount of
unpublished music \--

Susan Clermont:

Yes.

Male Speaker:

\-- and I'm wondering about the comparison between then and now. Let's
just take now. Say that an artist will die, and all of a sudden comes to
market a collection of music that has never before been on CD or record,
generally below the quality that the artist would have published in his
or her own way. Is there any comparison to the music that you're talking
about here?

Susan Clermont:

Maybe not. A lot of times, certainly in the period that I'm dealing with
here, often times music was expensive to purchase, it was not readily
available. Many composers, you know, they would publish some of the
works that they thought they could make enough money to support
themselves with, but a lot of pieces went to copyists. They were in
every major city, every major European city, there were stables of
copyists and as soon as a work was done where they might have needed
parts or an extra, an extra score because, hey, we're going to play that
in Prague next week, we need an extra copy of that, many, many times
these things were simply hand copied.

Male Speaker:

But by and large the works were performed?

Susan Clermont:

The works were performed, yeah, I think so. Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

\[applause\]

\[end of transcript\]