PLEA FOR A BRITISH UNION CATALOGUE OF OLD PRINTED MUSIC
| Date | 01 January 1945 |
| Pages | 41-44 |
| Published date | 01 January 1945 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026062 |
| Author | O.E. DEUTSCH |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
PLEA FOR A BRITISH UNION CATALOGUE OF
OLD PRINTED MUSIC
by O. E. DEUTSCH
COMPARISONS between continental and British music libraries on the one
hand and British and American on the other give evidence of the richness
of Great Britain in the field of old printed music. Even here there is little
realization or adequate means of knowing the extent of this wealth. Not
that the older catalogues of the continent, especially in Italy, Austria,
Germany, and France, or the newer ones of America, are much better, more
consistent, or up to date than the British, although they are probably more
numerous. On the whole the music libraries abroad are, however, better
known—at least in their own countries. In this connexion we are not so
much concerned with national music as with great music of
all
nations; the
extent of the latter only is open to comparison. No difficulty would arise
in gaining knowledge of a nation's accumulation of incunabula, collected
in the general and the special libraries: there are lists proudly showing the
national wealth in this sphere, and the British catalogues of incunabula are,
perhaps, the best in the world. But it is nearly impossible to get, from the
few existing printed music catalogues, exact knowledge about the distribu-
tion of rare music. The enterprise of R. Eitner, about 1900, in publishing
single-handed in ten volumes a world catalogue of old music partially failed
because for the most part he undertook the task of collecting his titles by
correspondence. He was handicapped also by the fact that the best cata-
logues were published only after he had completed his work. His references
to music in Britain were collected without visiting the libraries and are
very incomplete.
A number of modern printed catalogues of Italian,1 French, Belgian,
Dutch, Swedish, German, and Austrian libraries have been made, but none,
alas,
for the most famous collections in Vienna and Berlin. There are two
model catalogues for sections of the Music department of the Library of
Congress, Washington (by O. Sonneck, 1908 and 1912), and three very
good London catalogues compiled by W. Barclay Squire: Royal College
of Music (1908), British Museum (1912), and the King's Music Library
(British Museum) (1929). One example of old-fashioned British catalogues
is that of the Euing Collection, Glasgow (1878). J. A. Fuller-Maitland's
catalogue of printed music in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (1893),
is
not satisfactory: the entries are too short and exclude
details
now recognized
as essential. Even the two later catalogues of Barclay Squire, in which he
attempts to give dates of publication for undated music, omit the publisher's
1 During the past
35
years the Italians have been publishing a series of catalogues, each section
of which is dedicated to the music collections of one town. Unfortunately the volumes vary
considerably in their methods and quality, and the work has not been completed. It
is
presumed
that a general index will be made when the work is finished. This, however, is not an ideal
catalogue and should not be confused with the proposals put forward here.
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