A new exhibition celebrating the life and music of Ludwig van Beethoven, one of the most influential composers of the Western classical tradition, opens on Friday 3 December at the British Library.

Against the backdrop of war and revolution raging in Europe and the United States, Beethoven grew up in Bonn inspired by the ideals of freedom. He battled the blank page to compose some of the most inspiring pieces of music ever written, challenging conventions along the way, whilst also struggling with his own progressive hearing loss.

See the mind of this creative genius at work through items belonging to the composer himself and manuscripts scrawled in his own distinctive hand – we’ve picked a selection which you can find below.

 

Beethoven’s sketches for his Pastoral Symphony. British Library Add MS 31766

Beethoven started using bound sketchbooks to jot down and develop musical ideas in 1798. Before this time he had been using loose pages, like examples from the ‘Kafka’ Miscellany, which are also on display in the exhibition. The image shown here is from the sketchbook for his Symphony No. 6, op. 68 (known as the ‘Pastoral’), and contains material for the second movement (‘By the Brook’). Beethoven has marked at the top ‘Memories of country life’ (Erinnerungen an das Landleben).

Beethoven’s cadenza to a Mozart piano concerto. British Library Add MS 29803

Shown here is Beethoven’s cadenza for the last movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D minor (K. 466). Beethoven is known to have admired Mozart’s D minor concerto, and it is possible that he performed it in a benefit concert for Mozart’s widow, Constanze, in 1795. His cadenzas for the first and last movement were probably realised in notation at some point before 1809, when he published cadenzas for the first four of his own piano concertos. Perhaps significantly, it was also around this time, in 1808, that his increasing deafness forced Beethoven to give his last public performance with orchestra.

At the exhibition you’ll also have a chance to meet the man behind the music by getting close to the personal belongings that shine a light on his everyday life, such as his tuning fork, and even a hand-scrawled laundry list.

Beethoven’s tuning fork. British Library Add MS 71148 A

Tuning forks were invented in the early 18th century, and were used primarily for tuning string instruments (violins, violas, cellos guitars) to a common resonance for the note ‘A’ above middle ‘C’. Tests have shown that Beethoven’s tuning fork resonates at 455.4 Hertz, over half a semitone higher than today's standard ‘A’ pitch of 440 Hertz. As well as seeing it in the exhibition, you can hear what it sounds like.

At the end of your journey in the exhibition, reflect on your own relationship with Beethoven’s music today, found in film, comics and literature. Learn how the Ninth Symphony – and its choral section based on Friedrich Schiller’s poem Ode to Joy – became the soundtrack to political and social movements worldwide, played everywhere from the Tiananmen Square student protests to the fall of the Berlin Wall. 

View of the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna where Beethoven’s Ninth symphony was first performed in 1824. British Library K.Top.90.41.g

Explore Beethoven’s music, life and legacy further through a series of events, including talks, discussions and performances by David Wyn Jones, Adrian Brendel and Simon Callaghan, Jessica Duchen and Viv McLean, the Will Gregory Moog Ensemble, Boxwood & Brass, and exhibition curators Richard Chesser and Rupert Ridgewell. Visit also our Discovering Music Beethoven pages to uncover more about the composer’s creative genius, and the context in which he lived and worked.

Introduction

The Royal Music Library represents the music interests and collecting efforts of several British monarchs and members of the royal family. Establishing the line of provenance for the majority of individual volumes in the collection is a challenging task, however, as apart from notable exceptions, such as the Handel autographs that formed part of George III’s music collection[1], volumes with music by Agostino Steffani that were brought to England from Hanover by George I, volumes belonging to Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, and other examples, it is not possible to ascertain to which member of the royal family individual volumes belonged to. This is especially the case with pre-19th century volumes, as both Prince Albert and Queen Victoria were also keen collectors of antiquarian music, which means that 17th- and 18th-century volumes in the collection were not necessarily acquired then.

A three-month project at the British Library is helping to answer some of the questions regarding provenance of individual volumes in the collection, through bibliographical research on certain characteristics of manuscript and printed volumes, such as binding types, copyists’ handwriting, ownership marks, and other. This blog discusses a particular sub-collection in the Royal Music Library and its Italian connections.

Volumes of Italian Manuscript Editions

A number of volumes in the Royal Music Library are bound in cream vellum, with a (faded) title on each spine [Figure 1]. The vast majority contain what we might call ‘manuscript editions’ - a manuscript copy of a piece of music designed to be sold in a music shop as with a printed edition. These are often identifiable by the presence of an ornate title page or price, or the publisher's imprint, engraved or handwritten, though these are not always present. In the volumes examined in this sub-collection, each contains a number of manuscript editions of works by late 18th-century/early 19th-century Italian composers, such as Jommelli, Paisiello, and Cimarosa, most commonly short selections from Italian operas of the period.

Figure 1: Aprile (Giuseppe), 16 Vocal Duets and a Canon, British Library R.M.22.a.4.

Upon first glance, the variety of copyists and publishers contained within individual volumes suggests that binding occurred much later than purchase, and was undertaken by persons other than the first owner(s). Indeed, in some volumes, editions bearing the initials of more than one former owner have been bound next to each other. In general, each volume contains the musical hands of a number of different copyists, based mainly in Venice or Naples, both major music publishing centres in the late 18th century. There are significant overlaps in copyists’ hands across the collection, suggesting that the editions were acquired by their original owner(s) at around the same time. Indeed, even where several copyists’ hands are present, editions often bear the same style of title page, pointing to groups of copyists associated with specific publishers.

In some cases, it is possible to identify a publisher (though not the copyist) by name, based on the presence of ornate title pages. The name of the publisher Alessandri e Scattaglia (active 1770-1803), for example, is printed clearly on the example in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Aprile (Giuseppe), Arias and duets, British Library R.M.22.a.3 (1).

It is sometimes possible to extrapolate this kind of information across volumes. The title page in Figure 3, for example, bears the name of the publisher Luigi Marescalchi, active first in Venice (1770-1775) and then in Naples (1785-1799). The distinctive design also appears on the title page of an entirely different edition in another volume; we can surmise therefore that this was also sold by Marescalchi.

Figure 3: Paisiello (Giovanni), Arias and duets, British Library R.M.8.e.8.

Figure 4: Jommelli (Nicolo), Opera arias and duets, British Library R.M.22.f.10 (6).

However, it is best to be cautious when identifying the publishers of manuscript editions. The functions of publisher and distributor in late 18th-century Italy were vaguely defined, and publishers sometimes moved around, muddying the waters when it comes to establishing the location of a particular publication.[2] For the purposes of establishing the line of provenance for this sub-collection, however, this kind of detail is not essential. It is enough to conclude that the broad similarities encountered here between volumes suggest that most of the music contained therein was acquired in Italy, in the late 18th century, probably in Naples and Venice, and subsequently brought back to England.

Traces of ownership of Italian manuscript edition volumes

There are several indicators of former ownership which help us to establish who may have purchased these manuscript editions in Italy. On the title pages of several individual tracts, and on one front binding, the names 'Cawdor' and 'Elizabeth Campbell' denote ownership. This couple were John Campbell (1790-1860), 1st Earl Cawdor, and his wife Elizabeth (née Thynne of Bath) (1795-1866). The first Earl’s father, 1st Baron Cawdor (1753-1821), also John Campbell, was a dedicated antiquarian, acquiring such an extensive art collection that he was able to exhibit it in his own home on Oxford Street from 1790 to 1800.[3] Both he and his wife Caroline were keen patrons of the arts, particularly Italian opera, and visited Italy on numerous occasions, where they are known to have purchased numerous pieces of art and sculpture, particularly in Naples and Sicily. Extensive travel diaries of the European travels of both John and Caroline are held at the Carmarthenshire Record Office.[4]

It is likely therefore that much of the manuscript music in this sub-collection may have been purchased in Italy by John Campbell, 1st Baron, and inherited later by his son, John Campbell, 1st Earl. The Earl inherited his parents’ love of music, and retained a serious and scholarly devotion to the subject for the rest of his life, so he is likely to have cherished his father’s music, and no doubt added to the family collection. John and Elizabeth married in 1816, and in 1817 travelled to Italy as part of their honeymoon trip, and it is possible that they purchased music during their travels.[5] 

Figure 5: John Frederick Campbell by Richard James Lane, after James Rannie Swinton. Lithograph, 1848 (1848). NPG D22186. © National Portrait Gallery, London

Figure 6: Portrait of Elizabeth, Countess Cawdor after Lawrence. 1832. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

It is often Elizabeth’s name (either as Campbell or Cawdor) that appears on an individual edition, sometimes accompanied by ‘1817’, suggesting either that she acquired in Italy in 1817 or, perhaps, that she was gifted it by her husband upon marriage. Elizabeth’s travel diary from the trip survives, and in it, she frequently provides criticisms of pieces of art she encounters, demonstrating more than a passing knowledge of artistic quality and taste.[6] With further research, it may therefore be possible to establish whether she did in fact buy music in Italy during her honeymoon. Overall, although it may not be possible to establish exact circumstances of purchase by the Cawdor family, it is reasonable to conclude that, by the 1820s, the vast majority of individual editions in this sub-collection belonged to John and Elizabeth, First Earl and Countess of Cawdor.

The second part of this blog, to be published in a few weeks’ time, will follow the journey of these vellum volumes from the Cawdor family to Prince Albert, and through him, to the Royal Music Library of today.

Mary-Jannet Leith,

PhD Placement student, British Library

References

[1] Donald Burrows, 'The Royal Music Library and its Handel Collection', Electronic British Library Journal (2009), pp.1-40. All volumes of Handel’s autographs in the Royal Music Library have been digitised and are available to view on Digitised Manuscripts.

[2] Macnutt, R. ‘Alessandri & Scattaglia’, Grove Music Online (2001)

[3] Davies, J.E. The Changing Fortunes of a British Aristocratic Family 1689-1976: The Campbells of Cawdor and their Welsh Estates (Woodbridge, The Boydell Press) (2019), p. 276.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Davies, J.E. The Changing Fortunes of a British Aristocratic Family 1689-1976: The Campbells of Cawdor and their Welsh Estates (Woodbridge, The Boydell Press) (2019), p. 279.

[6] Ibid.

Alongside the religious and art music published during the 19th century, there was a substantial market for printed popular songs. The music of the London theatres and pleasure gardens had cultivated a steady demand for engraved song sheets throughout the 18th century, but the invention of lithography by Alois Senefelder (c.1797) injected a new graphic vitality into the genre. In a flurry of editorial experimentation brought about by lithography, printers played with the combination of music and image through the production of satirical song sheets. These were typically musical scores which featured a title page image as well as humorous caricatures that surrounded the notation adding a visual accompaniment to the musical narrative.

 

Figures 1-4: Robert Southey’s Quadrilling: A favourite Song, ascribed to the Authors of ‘Rejected Addresses’. British Library H.1652.bb.(1.)

Lithography offered a number of benefits over the engraving and etching that dominated music printing in the 18th and 19th centuries. Instead of engraving images onto metal plates with punches and burins, artists could use familiar materials such as crayons and pencils. It was even possible for the artist to work directly onto paper (with a special greasy ink) and for the printer to then transfer the image onto the absorbent stone used for making impressions. Drawing on a stone could be done ‘in the same way as one would execute a drawing on paper with ink or common chalk.’[1] This made it easier to reproduce maps, topographical plans, landscape drawings, portraits, and other works and, as Senefelder put it, ‘it has been generally observed that drawings of the less excellent artists, appear to greater advantage on stone, than on copper.’[2]

The precision of etching and engraving meant that it remained the dominant method for printing music in the 19th century, but the graphic flexibility and accessibility of lithography encouraged non-musical printers to experiment with music notation. Printers who specialised in graphic prints, keen to show off the capabilities of the new technology, jumped at the chance to apply lithographic techniques to printed music. One such publisher was William Hawkes Smith (1786-1840) of Birmingham. Smith was primarily an author and draughtsman who notably produced a set of illustrations for Robert Southey’s Thalaba the Destroyer.[3] In 1821 he published QUADRILLING; A favourite Song, ascribed to the Authors of ‘REJECTED ADDRESSES.’ [Figures 1-4] The edition was designed to show off Smith’s lithographic skills as the title page boasts, ‘Decorations designed and executed by WILLIAM HAWKES SMITH,’ and explicitly advertises the work as ‘printed by the Lithographic process.’

The song satirises the quadrille, a popular contemporary square dance for four couples. The title page features images of four respectable-looking couples standing in formation preparing to dance, setting up for the cacophony of humorous imagery on the following pages. The score contains just three lines of music overwhelmed by images that visualise the musical comedy: surrounding the stave and song text are depictions of different social classes attempting the dance.  Courtiers and citizens dance together, a man is pickpocketed as he falls over, Terpsichore (Greek muse) dances amongst men holding her lyre, and baronets, moneylenders, brokers, lawyers, and scullery maids are all made fun of in the commotion.

Although the combined novelty of a song sheet and a satirical cartoon must have impressed contemporary print- and music-buying audiences, this edition reveals a technology in its infancy. The smudging, inconsistent thickness of the text and the almost illegible publisher information at the foot of the title page [Figure 1] suggest that Smith had not yet mastered the new printing technique. Teething issues like these slowed down the uptake of lithography in the early 19th century, but technical treatises were published outlining solutions to the problems faced by those new to lithography.

Raucourt's A Manual of Lithography (1832) addressed some of the issues Smith faced. It explained in some detail what the printer should do if ‘the impressions are pale’, ‘The impressions are uneven’, ‘A part of the impression is wanting’ with over 100 other pieces of advice on mixing ink, cleaning and polishing the stones, etching drawings, imitating woodblocks etc. To fix the uneven impressions in this edition (most noticeable on the third line of notation (figure 2 and at the top of figure 3), for example, Smith would have had to ‘Increase the pressure of the scraper until it [took] up all the ink.’

Part of the image is missing at the top of the second page [Figure 3]. The manual suggested that this meant 'The stone, or the scraper, is not level: if this accident proceeds from the stone, some paper must be pasted on the leather of the box.' A later copy of Quadrilling (held at the Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection) suggests that these problems persisted throughout the process with faded and incomplete sections appearing in different parts of the score as the publisher worked to correct the mistakes. In the later copy Smith has also omitted the illegible text from the title page of the previous edition.

Manuals like this one helped to improve the quality of lithography in Britain and by the mid-1820s Smith seems to have perfected the process. In 1825, Smith published Washing Day: a proper new Ballad for wet weather [Figures 5-8]. The song was a popular ballad that made fun of a wife’s temperament on washing days. Clearly more confident in his abilities Smith was now trading as ‘the Lithographic Press.’ The title page of Washing Day attests to his technical improvement: the precise lines and contrasting textures of the text and image show a fluency not apparent in the comparatively clumsy printing of Quadrilling.

Figures 5-8: W. Hawkes Smith’s Washing Day: a proper new Ballad for wet weather. British Library H.1652.n.(21.).

Inside the score, we also see a printer more confident in his experiments. Rather than the images following the stave, the music physically bends around Smith’s cartoons and the lines of the stave become part of the graphic comedy. The notation yields to the windy weather depicted on the title page as it is literally blown out of shape by cherubs (top right of figure 6) and as the husband is told ‘with a frowning look, To get out of [his wife’s] way,’ the staves also move to avoid her. Women were often satirised in 19th-century popular songs and here the visual and musical comedy combine to reinforce the sharply defined gender roles of Victorian society.

The printed music collections at the British Library are particularly rich in this kind of visual material but satirical song sheets are currently difficult to find. They are usually catalogued as ordinary song sheets (with the first line of the song used for the catalogue title) and the graphic elements of the scores are seldom included in catalogue record. Satirical song sheets have thus received little scholarly attention, but each of these editions provides a unique insight into the creative responses of publishers to new printing technologies and help us to understand the interplay between the print and music trades during the 19th-century.

References

[1] Colonel Raucourt, A manual of lithography, or memoir on the lithographical experiments made in Paris, at the Royal School of the Roads and Bridges ... Translated from the French, by C. Hullmandel., ed. Charles Joseph Hullmandel, Third edition corrected. ed. (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, 1832), 86-7.

[2] Johann Nepomuk Franz Aloys Senefelder, A complete course of lithography ... accompanied by illustrative specimens of drawings. To which is prefixed a History of Lithography ... With a preface by F. von Schlichtegroll. Translated from the German by A. S[chlichtegroll] (London : Printed for R. Ackermann, 1819. (W. Clowes [printer]). 1819).

[3] Robert Southey, Essays in design drawn and etched by W. H. Smith, ... illustrative of the poem of Thalaba the Destroyer, by R. Southey, ed. William Hawkes Smith (Birmingham, 1818).

Dominic Bridge, Collaborative PhD student, University of Liverpool and British Library

Following our recent blog post about newly digitised material from the Royal Music Library, we thought it might be useful to provide an updated list of all the digitised music manuscripts now available online, which you can download via this link: Download British-library-digitised-music-manuscripts-online September 2021

Over the years we have digitised high-profile treasures such as music manuscripts from the Stefan Zweig collection, 97 volumes of Handel autographs, and many by other famous names such as Mozart, Beethoven and Bach. There are also many other early sources for instrumental and vocal music to explore, digitised either as part of research projects or for preservation purposes. These include some key 16th- and 17th-century sources of keyboard music, such as the Mulliner book (Add MS 30513), the ‘Cosyn’ (R.M.23.l.4) and ‘Forster’ (R.M.24.d.3) virginal books, as well as that of Elizabeth Rogers (Add MS 10337). 

The table of contents from the virginal book of Elizabeth Rogers, dated February 27 1656. British Library, Add MS 10337, f. 1v.

The most recent images to have be published on Digitised Manuscripts include a number of vocal partbooks that formed part of the Tudor Partbooks project. These six sets of partbooks (Royal Appendix MS 12-16; Royal Appendix MS 17-22; Royal Appendix MS 23-25; Royal Appendix MS 26-30; Royal Appendix MS 31-35; and Royal Appendix MS 49-54) join other partbooks of a similar period, such as those known by the names of previous owners: ‘Hamond’ (Add MS 30480-4), ‘Gyffard’ (Add MS 17802-5) and ‘Lumley’ (Royal Appendix MS 74-76). Images and more detailed information about these can also be found on the DIAMM website (Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music) website.

The last owner’s name mentioned above, John (Lord) Lumley (c. 1533-1609), also owned the six sets of partbooks now available online, as we can see from the ownership marks inside.

The ownership mark of Lord Lumley in Royal Appendix MS 13, f. iv-r

Lumley is perhaps now best known for his immense collection of books, the largest private library in England at the time. A lot of it came from the collection formed by his father-in-law, Henry Fitzalan, 12th Earl of Arundel. The Earl of Arundel was a prominent Catholic figure in England through much of the Tudor age, having held influential positions at the courts of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and, for a time, Elizabeth I. His collection contained some notable music manuscripts and publications, including works dedicated to him and pieces collected on his travels around mainland Europe. Accounts also survive of music making at Nonsuch Palace in Surrey, which had been sold to the Earl of Arundel by Mary I. Lavish court entertainments are the most vividly described events, but the Palace’s chapel will have been the site of more regular music making, perhaps using the partbooks described above.

Cantus part of ‘Christus factus est’ from a set of partbooks associated with the Flemish composer Derick Gerarde. Royal Appendix MS 31, f. 1r

Some of these sets of partbooks are especially interesting because they preserve repertoire from a particularly turbulent period of religious change. Royal Appendix MS 12-16, for example, contain polyphonic liturgical music from pre-Reformation England, while Royal Appendix MS 74-76 (the ‘Lumley’ partbooks) are among the earliest sources for church music of the Reformation itself. For various reasons – be it deliberate destruction or perceived obsolescence – relatively few comparable examples survive. The ‘Lumley’ partbooks show us one reason why some things may have been kept even after their original use became superseded: at some point the books of sacred music were repurposed as instrumental parts for secular pieces.

Instrumental parts for an ‘Allemand d’amour’, at the back of a triplex part book. Royal Appendix MS 74, f. 44r.

After Lord Lumley’s death in 1609 his collection entered the Royal library (see http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/TourRoyalStuart.asp for more information), which eventually became part of the British Museum’s collections when it was presented to the nation by George II in 1757. It is perhaps worth pointing out that, slightly confusingly, this Royal library is a separate one to the Royal Music Library that was given to the British Museum in 1957, having been on loan for several decades before that (see https://www.bl.uk/collection-guides/royal-music-library for more information).

Of the other digitised material to have been recently published, there are also various treatises including some of those from the collection of John Hawkins (Add MS 4920; Add MS 4922); more sources of 16th- and 17th-century music – including keyboard pieces by Frescobaldi (Add MS 40080), tunes and dances arranged for lute (Egerton MS 2046); violin and bass music by William Lawes (Add MS 17798) and, continuing the royal theme, a book of instrumental fantasias by Giovanni Coperario/John Cooper, music master to the children of James I (Add MS 23779). 

References:

Charles W. Warren: ‘The Music of Royal Appendix 12-16’, Music & Letters, vol. 51, no. 4 (October 1970), pp. 357-372.

Charles W. Warren: ‘Music at Nonesuch’, The Musical Quarterly, vol. 54, no. 1 (January 1968), pp. 47-57.

Judith Blezzard: ‘The Lumley Books: A Collection of Tudor Church Music’, The Musical Times, vol.112, no. 1536 (February 1971), pp. 128-130.

John Milsom: ‘The Nonsuch Music Library’ in Sundry Sorts of Music Books: Essays on the British Library Collections Presented to O. W. Neighbour on his 70th Birthday, edited by Chris Banks, Arthur Searle, and Malcolm Turner (London: The British Library, 1993), pp. 146-82. 

Chris Scobie, Lead Curator, Music Manuscripts

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In the last year we digitised nearly 40 manuscript volumes from the Royal Music Library, including autographs by Agostino Steffani, J.C. Bach, Alessandro Scarlatti, and other composers.

Among the manuscripts digitised are 24 volumes with works by Agostino Steffani (1654-1728), who served as Kapellmeister and diplomat at the court of Duke Ernst August of Hanover from 1688 until 1703. The manuscripts in the Royal Music Library, some of which are in his own hand, are thought to have been brought from Hanover to England by King George I. They include numerous volumes with Steffani's chamber duets and operas, which survive in their original bindings.

The original leather binding of volume X of Agostino Steffani’s 13-volume set of vocal duets, and folio 59r with the opening of the duet ‘Gia tu parti’ in Steffani’s own hand. British Library R.M.23.k.18.

The volume with the 1st Act of Agostino Steffani’s opera La superbia d’Alessandro (1691) in its original leather binding. British Library R.M.23.f.12.

All surviving volumes of Steffani’s 13-volume set of vocal duets at R.M.23.k.13-20 have now been digitised, with volumes R.M.23.k.16-20 available to view via our Archives and Manuscripts catalogue and Universal Viewer. The operas by Steffani that have been digitised include the Hanoverian operas La Superbia d’Alessandro, Orlando Generoso and Henrico Leone (the latter is available to view on our Digitised Manuscripts portal).

Other manuscripts that were digitised include autographs by Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782), music master to Queen Charlotte from 1763 to 1782, including his 3-act opera Artaserse from 1761 (R.M.22.a.18-20), and two Te Deum in D major (R.M.22.a.14, R.M.22.a.15) and Magnificat in C major  (R.M.22.a.11 and R.M.22.a.13).

Opening page of J.C. Bach’s Magnificat in C major in the composer’s hand. British Library R.M.22.a.13, f.1v.

Also digitised is a volume with 12 autograph symphonies by Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) (R.M.21.b.14).

Opening page of Alessandro Scarlatti’s Sinfonia Prima & Concerto grosso con due flauti. British Library R.M.21.b.14, f.1r.

Other highlights include autographs by Francesco Bianchi (1752-1810), and François Hippolyte Barthélémon (1741-1808), the opera Semiramide by Francesco Araja (1709-1770), and volumes with operatic arias and duets by Steffani, Pietro Torri (1650-1737), and Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739).

Title page of Francesco Araja’s opera Semiramide riconosciuta stating his position as 'Maestro di Capella' at the court of Empress Anna Iovanovna at St. Petersburg in 1737.

The volume is preserved in its original velvet binding and with the note ‘this volume belongs to the Queen 1788’ on the flyleaf which we find marked on a number of volumes in the Royal Music Library that belonged to Queen Charlotte. British Library R.M.22.a.6.

Alongside the digitised autograph Handel manuscripts in the Royal Music Library, the digitisation of these volumes is helping to highlight examples of well-represented composers in this collection and their autograph manuscripts, and also preserve manuscripts that survive in their original, and quite often fragile bindings.

The British Library is delighted to be part of an innovative new project that seeks to develop digital tools and methodologies to help capture the history of live performance.

The Internet of Musical Events: Digital Scholarship, Community, and the Archiving of Performances (InterMusE) is a two-year project funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council UK as part of the UK-US New Directions for Digital Scholarship in Cultural Institutions programme. Led by Professor Rachel Cowgill, from the University of York’s Department of Music, it brings together an interdisciplinary team of musicologists, archivists, computer scientists, and performance providers from the University of York, the Borthwick Institute for Archives, Computational Foundry at Swansea University, the British Library, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The project arises from longstanding recognition of the challenges associated with the documentation of, and access to, collections of performance ephemera, for which the British Library is a key repository in the UK. Live musical events play a vital role in community life across the globe, yet they often leave only faint traces on the historical record, even in modern times. Sources can be tantalisingly incomplete, confusingly inconsistent, and often scattered between different archives and collections, if preserved at all. While some ensembles, venues and music societies have documented their histories (the Proms Performance Archive being one notable example), the picture is fragmented with no common standards of description or connection between related online resources, or efforts to archive data.

InterMusE will make possible new ways of capturing and, crucially, linking different forms of data around musical events to form a dynamic, open-access digital archive. The research team will work with a diverse range of concert materials including programmes, posters and other ephemera held at the British Library, the University of York’s Borthwick Institute for Archives, the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Linen Hall Library (Belfast), the Royal College of Music, and three former chapters of the British Music Society (BMS): Huddersfield Music Society, the British Music Society of York, and Belfast Music Society. The richness of the resulting data will offer unprecedented opportunities to collect, analyse, and visualise information about musical events and how they have shaped and been shaped by community life over the past century. The digitised data will be used to create a series of online, open-access portals that can be linked with existing collections, resulting in a widely accessible digital archive of musical events.

Huddersfield Music Club: Programme for concert given by the Amadeus String Quartet on 12 October 1953.

Central to the project is the ambition to equip performing arts organisations and their communities with tools to help promote and enhance their own musical histories and traditions. This is particularly significant as communities begin to recover from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, as the project’s Lead Researcher, Professor Rachel Cowgill states:

'The experience of living through a global pandemic has, for many, greatly increased the value of music at precisely the time the ‘live event’ has fallen victim to strictures on social distancing and lockdown. InterMusE addresses some of the key challenges emerging for the arts and humanities in post-Covid times, investigating the mutually sustaining relationships between live music and communities and harnessing the capacity of digital technologies to enable collaboration and engagement with members of the public.'

InterMusE will combine computational digital-archiving methods with more accessible, community-focussed approaches such as oral-history interviews, audience reminiscences, and citizen research. This will not only facilitate engagement between particular musical societies and their audiences, but also create a new layer of evidential material for studying the impact and community significance of performance events in the 20th and 21st centuries. As Hilary Norcliffe (Archivist of the Huddesfield Music Society) commented, “Concert attendees are often keen to express their views about what they have heard and experienced but currently there is no means of recording these thoughts. This project offers the means for members of the society to add personal comments, views, reminiscences and materials, whilst also following their own lines of inquiry, thus enriching the archive.”

For more information, see the project website: https://intermuse.datatodata.org/

     

At the turn of the 19th century, British perceptions of revolutionary France and the Napoleonic wars were tied to myriad graphic, literary, and musical expressions. Between soldiers returning home, parading volunteer regiments, and theatrical renditions of war, the multiplicity of these imaginings were transformed and transported through print at a remarkable speed. After appearing in the London gazette, official news from the continent would go on a multimedia journey: passing through detailed (though often inaccurate) accounts in national and provincial newspapers; enduring the scrutiny of pamphlets and journals; being subjected to judgement in sermons; and set in public memory through the mockery of satirical cartoons.

Printed music was better placed than other media to incorporate military images because the large format of music publications meant that there was ample space on the title page for additional decoration. Taking advantage of the fashion for all things military, music publishers rushed to produce commemorative editions of battle music. In the months following The Battle of Camperdown (11 October 1797) Music publishers Joseph Dale, Longman & Broderip, and Corri, Dussek & Co. produced commemorative works celebrating the victory. They used the textual and graphic elements of the score to shape them into military souvenirs.

The cheaper editions (selling for between 1s 6d and 2s 6d), such as Joseph Dale’s, featured a standard unadorned title page. As was the practice with most editions of battle music, Dale fashioned the score into a commemorative object by including a date on the title page. This set these editions apart from other printed music of the period as publication dates were usually omitted to prevent later reprints seeming old or out of fashion. This shows that publishers considered the publication date to be part of the commercial appeal of these editions, so they were not concerned by the ephemerality this imposed on the printed object.

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Longman & Broderip’s edition of Britannia by Daniel Steibelt (1765 - 1823) dresses the title in British imperial iconography, with a laurel wreath crossed with flags of the British empire. The naval scene at the foot of the title page captures the moment when the British flagship Venerable inflicts the final blow on the Dutch flagship Vryhied. Camperdown saw Duncan celebrated for his bravery and leadership, having taken his flagship into the heart of the action and in difficult waters. By using this moment at the battle’s climax, the score immortalises Duncan’s bravery and Britain’s naval dominance.

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The celebration of Duncan was not only due to his perceived courage but also the sheer extent of his victory. Within three hours of the start of the battle, Duncan was not only able to report a British victory but also the capture of eleven Dutch ships. Music publishers Corri, Dussek & Co. chose to show this side of the battle in their commemoration, avoiding the engagement itself and focusing on the outcome. Their chosen image emphasised the ‘Total Defeat’ of the Dutch fleet by showing their captured ships in tatters, being towed back to Britain, the punctured sails and post victory setting reminiscent of Thomas Whitcombe’s painting of the battle (1797).

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The commercial opportunities that arose around the Napoleonic wars were not limited to events happening abroad, but also covered celebrations at home. In 1798 Corri, Dussek & Co. published the descriptive piece A Complete & exact delineation Of the Ceremony from St. James’s to St. Pauls: … to return thanks for the several Naval Victories obtained by the British Fleet over those of France, Spain, & Holland. The naval thanksgiving (1797) enlisted the full theatricality of public spectacle, involving the monarchy, government, members of the army and navy, and ordinary Britons lining the streets accompanied by bespoke music written by J. L. Dussek (1760-1812). The score provided an audio-visual reproduction of the event: it contained music written for the procession and church service and captured the visuality of the occasion through an ‘elegant Frontispiece’, which is unfortunately now lost. 

George III conceived the event to rival the civic ceremonies of revolutionary France in an attempt to promote a sense of national unity in Britain. This impact, however, was limited to those who lived near enough to London to attend the ceremony. The success of the occasion relied heavily on newspapers and periodicals circulating accounts to other parts of the country, but Corri, Dussek & Co.’s musical edition was unique in its capacity to deliver both the visual and audial spectacle to those who had not witnessed the event. This edition gave people who did not live in London the opportunity to experience and take part in the patriotic symbolism of the ceremony from afar.

The hype surrounding military victories provided a market for commemorative print in the short term, capitalising on spikes in patriotic sentiment and the celebrations linked to the events. In this context music scores became collectable objects alongside commemorative pottery, porcelain, and medals, together projecting idealised images of war and victory. They helped to facilitate celebration by reminding purchasers of important dates in the national calendar and providing the music with which to celebrate them. The graphic and textual additions to printed music meant that scores had commercial value beyond their musical content and appealed to the conspicuous consumption of print buying audiences, the visually idealised militarism of the title pages allowing Britons to fulfil their patriotic duty through purchasing the score.

Dominic Bridge, Collaborative PhD student, University of Liverpool and British Library