Dispersal of the Cortot Collection: 290 Treatises in Lexington

Abstract

A fine private library reflects the opportunities and interests of its collector, stimulates him intellectually, and perhaps gives him altruistic pleasure as he sees that his books are useful to others. A collector's library lives and grows as he does, and when he dies, his library becomes a shadow of the being to whose interests it owes its peculiar form and existence. If it is a manifestation of narrow parochial curiosities, one is not surprised to see it sold for ninepence a barrow load (to recall the sermons of Theobald Pontifex). If the collection is a great one, containing rare and even unique items, one might expect it to gain a new master and to continue existence on its own, but this is not likely to be the case. The true collector enjoys the collecting as well as the collection, and the individual in possession of funds sufficient to acquire a significant collection intact is probably rarer than the availability of such collections. Large, long-established public and private libraries which may have ample resources are apt to find too many duplications to justify the acquisition of complete units. They will need, rather, to fill in small, and not so small, lacunae here and there. The odds are against preservation of a substantial private library through outright sale. The fate of the Cortot collection is a case in point. Alfred Denis Cortot (26 September 1877-15 June 1962), a man of great talent and broad interests, was a pianist, teacher, and conductor. In 1905 he formed a trio with Jacques Thibaud and Pablo Casals which achieved wide fame. He was appointed professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire in 1907. As early as 1902, at the age of twenty-five, he had conducted the French premi&re of Richard Wagner's Gotterddmmerung. Some idea of Cortot's musical abilities may be gleaned from the following recollections of his friend Henry Pruni&res (1886-1942), the noted French musicologist who was, apparently, the catalyst of Cortot and collecting.