This week, the British Library is commemorating the 80^th anniversary of VE Day with a series of blogs and social media features highlighting items from our collections relating to the Second World War. Here we spotlight a series of annotated programmes from the legendary series of daily concerts put on by Dame Myra Hess at the National Gallery.

The National Gallery Concerts took place on weekdays for a span of six and a half years, between 10 October 1939 and 10 April 1946. They filled an important gap left by the mass cancellation of concerts in London during the early stages of the war, and brought new artistic life to the National Gallery, which had evacuated most of its paintings. The National Gallery’s webpages provide historical overviews, anecdotes, and photographs of the concerts, and information about the organising team. The concerts were initiated and directed by the pianist Myra Hess (1890-1965); she planned the concerts with the composer-pianist-musicologist Howard Ferguson; her niece Beryl Davies kept on top of correspondence; and her agents Ibbs & Tillett handled bookings and printed the programmes.[i] Ferguson recalled Hess’s summary of their mammoth collaboration: ‘Isn’t it extraordinary, Howardy? We’ve worked together for six and a half years without actually hitting one another!’.[ii] More about Hess’s life with and beyond the concerts during the war can be found in Jessica Duchen’s engaging and detailed recent biography of the pianist.

A montage of three concert programme annotations reading 'News wonderful (weather hot)'

Hess bequeathed a complete set of programmes to the British Museum, together with accounts, lists of works performed, an index of performers, and other related material. These handsomely-bound volumes, which were transferred to the British Library on its foundation in 1973, provide a comprehensive overview of the music performed, together with statistical and administrative aspects of the concert series. Most of the programmes contain minor annotations, in a few different hands, noting attendees (which often surpassed 1000) and income from ticket sales (profits went to the Musicians Benevolent Fund). Many also provide testimony of specific wartime events, the general political climate (‘bad news’, ‘good news’), and even the weather, as seen in the little montage above of concerts from late April and early May 1945. The programmes included below display a cross-section of such annotations, and also serve as examples of the prominent contributions made by women, émigré and Jewish musicians, and international (including German) soloists to the concert series.

Two Elena Gerhardt concert programmes from November and December 1939. All programmes from British Library shelfmark Cup.404.c.1/1. Click to view the full-size image.

The two programmes above present the first two of 16 dates featuring Elena Gerhardt (1883-1961), the German mezzo-soprano and superstar of the Lieder world who had settled permanently in London in 1934.[iii] The first was an all-Schubert programme, the second all-Brahms, and both concerts were given twice. In her memoirs, Gerhardt recalls thinking that the outbreak of war would be the end of her career: ‘all my Lieder recitals were called off […] and I did not believe that the English public would want to hear Lieder sung in German for a long time’.[iv]  When Hess invited her to perform, she was taken aback:

I was so surprised […] I could never sing Lieder translated, and besides, did she not realise that my nationality was still German? […] To listen to the language of the enemy was, in my opinion, to ask too much of an audience.[v]

That Hess was adamant Gerhardt should sing in German seems to have articulated a wider belief in music’s ability to transcend matters of politics and language. In her 7 November performance, Gerhardt sang Schubert’s song ‘An die Musik’ as an encore, the lyrics of which speak of music’s potential to transport its listeners to a ‘better world’. Gerhardt was turning 56 in the autumn of 1939, but here’s an earlier (and therefore out of copyright) recording of her singing ‘An die Musik’, with the pianist Harold Craxton in 1924 (Aeolian Vocalion 03545).

On 1 December, Gerhardt was joined by Hess and Lionel Tertis for a programme of Brahms, including his beautiful pair of songs with viola obbligato. As well as telling us the attendance numbers (1,572 at the 1pm concert, 467 at 5.30pm), the annotations include notice that Finland had been invaded the day before. This refers to the Soviet invasion that sparked the so-called ‘Winter War’, lasting three and a half months. Skipping ahead to 13 March 1940, we find reference to the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty, with a programme marked ‘Russo + Finnish Peace signed 12^th’.

Programme of 13 March 1940: Astra Desmond, Grace Shearer, Stratton Quartet

That this was an all-Sibelius concert seems to have been serendipitous, as programmes were planned, publicised, and printed well in advance. The programme gives opportunity to highlight, briefly, the contralto Astra Desmond, who introduced many of Sibelius’s lesser-known songs to the UK, both through concert platforms like this one, and through essays and radio broadcasts. Desmond was a keen linguist and song translator, and she learned Swedish and rudimentary Finnish in order to specialise in Scandinavian song. The British Library holds Desmond’s papers, which include documentation of her wartime concert tours around Europe and her broadcasts on various BBC foreign services, which formed part of the cultural diplomacy and propaganda strategies of corporations like the British Council and the BBC.

Photograph of Roland Hayes and Myra Hess, copyright Ronald Procter. From MS Mus. 1840/1, reproduced with permission from the estate of Howard Ferguson. We have been unable to find information about the estate of Ronald Procter

The British Library’s small set of letters and papers of Myra Hess collected by Howard Ferguson (MS Mus. 1840) includes ephemera relating to handful of noteworthy concerts, including this photograph of the American tenor Roland Hayes with Myra Hess at their concert of 15 October 1943.[vi] Hayes was one of the most eminent singers of his time, and he was booked for the opening week of the fifth season of National Gallery Concerts. Hayes was especially known for his Schubert, but he was also influential in his use of a programming strategy that combined groups of earlier song and Lieder with a group of spirituals – music he had grown up singing, and which he performed at this concert in arrangements by himself and by R. Nathaniel Dett.[vii]

Programme of 15 October 1943: Roland Hayes, Myra Hess, and Gerald Moore

‘Good news’: Spring 1945

As the end of the war approached in Spring 1945, annotations on the programmes more frequently read ‘good news’ or ‘news wonderful’. The programme of 7 May 1945 states ‘War virtually over in Europe’.

Programme of 7 May 1945: Mátyás Seiber and the Zorian Quartet

The Zorian Quartet had an all-women line-up, led by violinist Olive Zorian; they gave premieres of new quartets by the likes of Benjamin Britten, Michael Tippett, Priaulx Rainier, and Doreen Carwithen, and their discography includes many landmark early recordings of 20^th-century music. Here, their Bartók performance was preceded by an illustrated lecture about the quartet by Mátyás Seiber. Seiber was a Hungarian-born composer who left Nazi Germany in 1933 and settled in the UK in 1935; he became a British citizen after the war, and contributed considerably to the shaping of 20^th-century music in Britain as a composer, pedagogue, and new music advocate.[viii] His wide-reaching musical activities can be explored in the important manuscript and sound collections donated by Seiber’s family to the British Library.[ix] Seiber was born on 4 May 1905, and at the time of posting this blog, celebrations marking his 120^th anniversary were underway in London.

The National Gallery was closed for VE Day holidays on 8 and 9 May 1945 – as the programme of 10 May tells us. After paging through all the programmes, taking in both their musical significance and the political twists and turns of the stark annotations, it was exhilarating finally to read: ‘War in Europe over’.

Programme of 10 May 1945: Maurice Raskin and Marcelle Gazelle

Frankie Perry, Digital Music Collections Specialist

[i] Howard Ferguson, ‘A short history of the concerts’, in National Gallery concerts, in aid of the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund: 10^th October 1939 – 10^th October 1944 (London, 1944).

[ii] Howard Ferguson, Music, Friends and Places : a memoir (London: Thames Publishing, 1997), 59.

[iii] Gerhardt (and Hayes, mentioned later on) are two of the several artists whose appearances at the concerts are covered in Duchen’s new book. See, Myra Hess: National Treasure (Kahn & Averill, 2025), 182ff.

[iv] Elena Gerhardt, Recital (London: Methuen & Co., 1953), 125.

[v] Gerhardt, Recital, 126. For discussion of Gerhardt’s National Gallery performances in the context of broader politics of singing language at the time, see Laura Tunbridge, Singing in the Age of Anxiety: Lieder Performances in New York and London between the World Wars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), Ch. 4.

[vi] These were donated by Hugh Cobbe in memory of Howard Ferguson in 2009, and can be found at MS Mus. 1840. For more on Ferguson, see Cobbe, ‘Howard Ferguson at 80’, The Musical Times, 129/1748 (1988), 507-510.

[vii] On Hayes’s influential programming, see ‘Listening B(l)ack: Paul Robeson After Roland Hayes’, The Journal of Musicology, 32/4 (2015), 524-557. On the racialised reception of Hayes as a Lieder singer, see Kira Thurman, Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021), Ch. 5.

[viii] See Florian Scheding, Musical Journeys: Performing Migration in Twentieth-Century Music (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2019), esp. Chapters 2 and 3.

[ix] Music manuscripts and papers of Mátyás Seiber, Add MS 62784-62887; supplementary papers at MS Mus. 1695-1696. Seiber’s own collection of sound recordings is catalogued as the Mátyás Seiber Collection, C1584.

The music placing desk has recently become the temporary home of a fascinating collection of pamphlets from the mid-20^th century. BBC Radio for Schools produced a number of long-running programmes during this period, such as Singing Together and Time and Tune, that were aimed at bringing music education and communal music-making to children across the country.

Although music programming aimed at school children had been broadcast on occasions since the 1920s, the BBC School Radio began to be used significantly and regularly during World War II, when children were experiencing evacuation and the practice of community music-making was considered necessary to support their integration into new schools. Leading this was a programme called Singing Together, which ran from September 1939 to March 2001 and is fondly remembered by many people around the UK. Singing Together (and the accompanying Teacher’s Notes) is well represented in the collections on the placing desk, along with other programmes like Time and Tune, Music Session, Making Music (BBC Television Broadcasts to Schools), and Music Workshop. The pamphlets span a wide period of time, 1955 to 1974, that saw various changes to the radio programme including its home station and its presenters.

A collage of BBC Radio for Schools pamphlets

Due to BBC taping policies, the vast majority of the Schools Radio broadcasting output is lost, save for a handful that exist in the BBC’s archives and other archives (including the British Library’s own Sound and Vision collections).[i] The pamphlets that accompanied each term of programming are the best documentation we have of long-running and culturally significant programmes such as Singing Together, aside from anecdotes and memories from those lucky enough to have experienced them as children or as teachers.

As I explored the BBC Radio for Schools pamphlets, I noticed how rare it is nowadays to find children’s sheet music so beautifully designed and available to all schoolchildren. The collection reflects the vastly changing landscape of music pedagogy in the 20^th century. Inspired by these collection items, the following blog post taps into my own musicological research, and considers how these unique, historic items might relate to broader contemporary attitudes and perceptions of children's music. A later post will explore the many artists and designers behind these pamphlets.

Four illustrated covers of pamphlets

Communal music-making

As nostalgia becomes an increasingly potent cultural sentiment, recollections of shared childhood experiences have seen more media attention. In 2014, BBC Radio 4 broadcasted a documentary hosted by Jarvis Cocker which revisited Singing Together and featured many accounts of people’s experiences of the show in the 1960s and 1970s.[ii] My own experience of regular communal singing and music-making was very different however. I grew up in the 2000s and 2010s, when radio was losing its youth appeal in favour of CDs and streaming, but I was privileged to have access to holistic music-making throughout my childhood at Coda Music Trust, a registered charity, and music and arts school/therapy centre located on the south coast. This was not the case for the majority of my peers and, I suspect, children up and down the country at that time. The collection of BBC Radio for Schools pamphlets at the British Library illustrates a cultural tradition that has largely been left behind: community music-making as a live, nation-wide practice. Singing Together saw thousands of children all, well, singing together at the same time, singing the same song, in classrooms from Land’s End to John o’ Groats, every week.

As an adult, I have rediscovered long-distance (or rather, time-displaced) communal singing through uploads of Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest on YouTube. This was an educational show from the mid 1960s featuring Seeger and various guest musicians including legends like Johnny Cash, Elizabeth Cotten, Mississippi John Hurt, and Buffy Sainte-Marie. A favourite of mine was the episode featuring Bernice Reagon, and I had a particularly transformative experience singing along with Reagon, Seeger, and other guest Jean Ritchie from my student digs in Leeds during the pandemic, 60 years after the episode’s first broadcast.

These practices are incredibly powerful, community-building activities that both children and adults alike can benefit greatly from participating in. The BBC Radio for Schools pamphlets at the British Library document an extremely effective curriculum for communal music-making that has had a huge impact on those who participated in those classes as a child, as can be heard in the Singing Together documentary.[iii]

Children’s music

Children’s music sadly remains a genre greatly overlooked by the general public and musicologists alike. Its cultural significance is often forgotten, and contemporary children’s music is dominated by the Kidz Bop series that has been criticised in recent years for its overly censorious tendencies.[iv] But there are examples of older recorded children’s music that gained cult status upon re-release. One such example is The Langley Schools Music Project album, a collection of pop song covers recorded by Canadian school choruses in the 1970s. Reissued by Bar/None Records in 2018 under the title Innocence & Despair, the album garnered critical praise from many of the artists covered.[v] For example, Fred Schneider of the B-52s described the music as “a haunting, evocative wall-of-sound experience that is affecting in an incredibly visceral way.” Likewise, David Bowie spoke on the cover of ‘Space Oddity’: "The backing arrangement is astounding. Coupled with the earnest if lugubrious vocal performance you have a piece of art that I couldn't have conceived of".

In fact, the haunting effect of children’s voices, with all their associated innocence, cheerily singing songs like ‘Space Oddity’, Barry Manilow’s ‘Mandy’, the Eagles’ ‘Desperado’, the Beach Boys’ ‘God Only Knows’, and ‘Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft’, creates a dissonance of affect that can be incredibly moving. In the aptly re-titled Innocence & Despair, musical simplicity is combined with communal music-making, children’s voices, and powerful lyricism in an aesthetically significant way. There is surprisingly little musicological research into the affective experience of hearing music made by children.

Like the Langley School Music, another release that highlights the haunting quality of recorded children’s music is Trunk Records’ Classroom Projects, a compilation of music made by and for British schools in the latter part of the 20^th century. Similarly to the BBC Radio for Schools output, many of the pieces featured on this album have a more educational tone, as opposed to the pop music of Innocence & Despair. There are classroom experiments in aleatoric music and musique concrete as well as “public service broadcast”-style songs about drink-driving. The introduction track with narration by Robert Gittings as well as the voice featured in ‘Examples of 12 Note Melodies’ feature the clipped, received pronunciation associated with wartime BBC radio broadcasts like those represented in the British Library collection. However,  Classroom Projects takes the “haunting” descriptions we have already seen to a whole new level. Its focus on discordant and atonal contemporary classical music of the era has a disquieting effect that is only amplified when you remember that it was made by children (‘Music for Cymbals’, ‘An Aleatory Game’, ‘Musique Concrete’, and ‘Duet for Two Flutes’). Other tracks featuring vocals reveal what can only be described as a dark imagination in the children making them, such as ‘The Lonely Coast’ and ‘Autumn’. Traditional ballads and contemporary folk songs like ‘Jimmy Whalen', ‘A Soalin’’ and the utterly terrifying ‘The Lyke-Wake Dirge’ illustrate the capacity of children’s music to elicit horror in listeners.

Even cheerful or mellow tracks have a temporally uncanny quality to them as a result of the noise and low fidelity sound that accompanies the intended music (‘Portland Town’, ‘Puppets’, ‘Alleluia’, ‘Strawberry Fayre’). The stand-out track for me on Classroom Projects is The Small Choir of St. Brandon’s School’s cover of ‘Bright Eyes’. It is hard to describe accurately the experience of listening to this song, other than to say it is, to me, the sonic equivalent of a rictus grin. At once deeply sinister, saccharine, and peculiarly melancholic, I find this example of children’s music incredibly moving.

It may be time to reevaluate the aesthetic significance of children’s music, and, to return to the collection at the heart of this post, a good place to start is with the BBC Radio for Schools collection of pamphlets. This collection represents more than simply the paper accompaniment for long-cancelled radio shows. They reflect profound experiences of music and community felt by children from all corners of the UK for many decades, experiences that are held dearly in the memories of 1000s of adults today and that have not successfully been replicated for children growing up now. The fullness of the musicality held in the pamphlets of Singing Together as well as the albums mentioned above cannot be overstated: a full spectrum of complex and intense emotions channelled in the communal and nurturing medium of music education. 

Lou Baynes, Collections Support Assistant, Music Collections

References

[i] BBC Archive, ‘BBC Archives - Wiped, Missing and Lost’, BBC Archive Service (online, n.d.) <https://www.bbc.co.uk/archiveservices/wiped-missing-and-lost> [accessed 8 April 2025].

[ii] Jarvis Cocker, Singing Together, produced by Ruth Evans, BBC Radio 4 (November 2014) <https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b04stc6c> [accessed 8 April 2025].

[iii] ‘Singing Together: the radio show that got schoolchildren singing’, BBCNews, (28 November 2014), <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30210485> [accessed 8 April 2025].

[iv] Aditi Shrikant, ‘Why Kidz Bop’s “censored” songs aren’t just annoying – theyre problematic’, Vox (online, October 2018) <https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/3/17930132/kidz-bop-censorship-music> [accessed 8 April 2025].

[v] The Langley Schools Music Project, Innocence and Despair, Bar/None Records (2001) <https://bar-nonerecords.bandcamp.com/album/innocence-and-despair> [accessed 8 April 2025].

Further reading and links

barnonerecords, ‘The Langley Schools Music Project - Space Oddity (Official)’, YouTube (15 October 2013 [2001]) <https://youtu.be/YWjTbB4ONeM?> [accessed 9 April 2025]

BBC Archive, ‘BBC Archives - Wiped, Missing and Lost’, BBC Archive Service (online, n.d.) <https://www.bbc.co.uk/archiveservices/wiped-missing-and-lost> [accessed 8 April 2025]

Borstal Boy, ‘The Small Choir Of St Brandon' s School - Bright Eyes’, YouTube (15 December 2015 [2013]) <https://youtu.be/ahJUAU0zzlY> [accessed 9 April 2025]

‘Classroom Projects - Incredible Music Made By Children In Schools’, Discogs (online, n.d.) <www.discogs.com/release/4956614-Various-Classroom-Projects-Incredible-Music-Made-By-Children-In-Schools> [accessed 9 April 2025]

Cocker, Jarvis, Singing Together, produced by Ruth Evans, BBC Radio 4 (November 2014) <https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b04stc6c> [accessed 8 April 2025]

Coda Music Trust, <https://www.coda.org.uk/> [accessed 8 April 2025]

Gilles Spadari, ‘Sounds & Silence – The Lyke Wake Dirge’, YouTube (2 October 2015 [2013]) <https://youtu.be/KchxCQlzqwY> [accessed 9 April 2025]

The Langley Schools Music Project, Innocence and Despair, Bar/None Records (2001) <https://bar-nonerecords.bandcamp.com/album/innocence-and-despair> [accessed 8 April 2025]

Rr R- Folk Music Channel, focusing on Pete Seeger, ‘Episode 5 - Rainbow Quest by Pete Seeger: Jean Ritchie and Bernice Reagon’, YouTube (online, 29 January 2022 [1965-1966]) <https://youtu.be/XaNHD371py8?si=pUdVnRMsb79v7dCi> [accessed 9 April 2025]

Shrikant, Aditi, ‘Why Kidz Bop’s “censored” songs aren’t just annoying – they’re problematic’, Vox (online, October 2018) <https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/3/17930132/kidz-bop-censorship-music> [accessed 8 April 2025]

‘Singing Together: the radio show that got schoolchildren singing’, BBC News, (28 November 2014), <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30210485> [accessed 8 April 2025]

The Paul Hirsch Music Collection at the British Library is one of the most outstanding discrete collections of printed music held within the Library.[1] It is accompanied by the Paul Hirsch Papers, which include archival papers and documents relating to Hirsch’s music library and his collecting practices.

Paul Hirsch and his collection

Paul Hirsch, the son of a German-Jewish industrialist, was born in Frankfurt on 24 February 1881. He first began collecting music with his acquisition in 1897 of a Peters Edition copy of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion which would become the foundation purchase of a collection that would in time encompass over 18,000 items.

Paul Hirsch was also an accomplished musician (he played the violin and viola to a high standard), and an exceptionally cultivated man, who fully understood the needs of both the performer and the musicologist. In collecting, he was guided by principles of scholarly importance, the physical condition and preservation of the items, their rarity, typography, binding, and any special features such as illustration. In the early years of this collection, Hirsch’s acquisitions were dominated by editions of, and scholarly works relating to, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of Hirsch’s favourite composers. Hirsch went to great lengths to assemble a vast collection of first and early editions in 1906, and was able to publish his own catalogue of Mozart items, the Katalog einer Mozart-Bibliothek.

Paul Hirsch, Katalog einer Mozart-Bibliothek. Frankfurt 1906. British Library Hirsch 442

Later, Beethoven and Schubert would be represented in almost equal strength and the library would hold a copy of almost every major opera published in full score. Paul Hirsch published a four-volume catalogue to his own collection, detailing the four main areas of the collection: theoretical works; opera; miscellaneous; and early editions of Mozart along with first editions of Beethoven and Schubert.[2] Items included in his collection can be searched on our library catalogue.

Hirsch's Music Library

From 1909 onwards, Hirsch’s Music Library in the Neue Mainzerstraße was open to the public for two afternoons per week, with Dr. Kathi Meyer as its librarian, whom Hirsch had appointed. Internationally, the collection was recognised as being an outstanding one, with many famous visitors throughout the musical world flocking to the library. Over the years, his visitors’ ledgers record such famous clientele as Alfred Einstein, cousin of Albert Einstein. On a warm and sunny October afternoon in 1920, Hirsch held an open day for visitors, complete with some of the rarest items, hand-picked, on display, and a small catalogue to describe them. One of the guests, Ludwig Sternaux, described the collection with admiration as the greatest private library he knew, located within one of the best parts of Frankfurt.

However, due to the changing political circumstances in Germany, it increasingly became more and more difficult for Hirsch to maintain his passion as a collector, having maintained contacts with booksellers all over Europe via his correspondence and regular travels. His correspondence after 1933 reflects the pressures to which Hirsch found himself exposed, due to the regulations which the Nazi authorities were imposing upon those wanting to obtain foreign currencies and purchases. More acutely, Hirsch, as a Jewish citizen in Germany, must have felt his business, and indeed his and his family’s lives to be under threat. His skills as a collector become even more remarkable when the enthusiasm he maintained amid the political events of those times is considered.

Hirsch fled Nazi Germany in 1936 and settled in Cambridge. In 1946, he sold his collection to the British Museum – later British Library – after it had previously been housed within Cambridge University Library for a short period. Paul Hirsch died in Cambridge on 23 November 1951, having secured for the British Library one of its finest ever acquisitions.

Hirsch the collector

The Paul Hirsch Papers at the British Library provide detailed records of how carefully and systematically Paul Hirsch went about building his library. All genres and all periods of European classical music are represented in his collection. It was his practice sometimes to buy inexpensive, imperfect copies of an item, and to exchange them for better copies at a later stage, if the opportunity arose. As Hirsch himself put it:

‘I do not regret a single one of my purchases, although I know I sometimes paid too much. What I do regret are the things I refused to buy, for many of them I have not seen again and some I despair ever to see again’.

The Paul Hirsch Papers include correspondence from bookdealers in major cities such as London, Paris, and Berlin, with whom Hirsch was in regular contact in the 1920s and ‘30s in Germany, as well as from the period following his move to England. You can find out more about the Paul Hirsch Papers in this blog.

Hirsch the musician

Not only was Paul Hirsch a collector of music, but he was also a gifted performer. He played the violin and viola, as a talented amateur, giving chamber music concerts at his own home in Frankfurt on a monthly basis. The Paul Hirsch Papers include concert programmes from concerts given in his house at 29 Neue Mainzerstraße. Hirsch played first violin in his own string quartet and quintet.

Highlights from the collection

Theoretical works

Among the many hundred theoretical works collected by Hirsch are several by the 15th century Italian theorist Franchinus Gaffurius. The autograph manuscript of Gaffurius’s first important work Theoriae Musicae Tractatus (A treatise on the theory of music), probably dates from 1479. A revised version of the treatise, which was printed in 1480 with the title Theoricum Opus, is also in the Hirsch Collection.

Franchinus Gaffurius: Theoriae Musicae Tractatus. British Library Hirsch IV.1441.

16th century music printing

The Hirsch Collection is especially rich in early examples of music printing. Ottaviano Petrucci was among the first to print music from moveable type. In 1498 he was granted a 20-year privilege to print both polyphonic music and chant in the Venetian states; by 1510 he has produced around 40 lavish volumes of sacred and secular music. Among these were five books of motets by the most highly regarded composers of the day, including Josquin, Brumel and Isaac. Hirsch owned a fine copy of the superius part of the third book of motets.

Ottaviano Petrucci's Motetti C. Venice, 1504. British Library Hirsch III.984.

Decorated editions

Hirsch was particularly interested in decorated editions and fine engraving. The image shown here is from a description of a court ballet performed in celebration of the marriage of the Duc de Joyeuse in 1581 and includes illustrations of the costumes and sets, as well as the full text, and music for the songs and dances.

Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx, Balet Comique de la Royne. Paris, 1582. British Library Hirsch III.629

Musical playing cards

The vogue for dancing and singing in the early 18th century led to a huge increase in the publication of popular music. Some was published in unusual forms, for instance on fans or playing cards. Hirsch acquired a rare pack of 52 playing cards dating from around 1725. Each card bears a song for voice and flute. The cards are currently on display in our Treasures Gallery.

Pack of musical playing cards. British Library Hirsch IV.1444

A new AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) PhD Studentship between the British Library and Royal Holloway, University of London will study the Paul Hirsch Music Collection, its rich history and Paul Hirsch's collecting practices. More information about this exciting project and how to apply can be found on the Royal Holloway website.

The deadline for applications is Friday 25 April 2025, 12 noon UK time.

Music Collections Team 

Further reading

[1] For an overview of the collection, see Alec Hyatt King, ‘Paul Hirsch and his Music Library’, British Library Journal, 7/1 (1981), pp. 1-11. Available at: https://bl.iro.bl.uk/concern/articles/7122340c-9fd4-4593-ba59-5c23fbf6d375

[2] Paul Hirsch and Kathi Meyer-Baer, Katalog der Musikbibliothek Paul Hirsch (vols 1-3, Berlin: M. Breslauer, 1928-1936; vol 4, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947).