ON MUSICAL BOOK-PLATES

Abstract

OST music-lovers are also book-lovers and book-readers; but it does not necessarily follow that they are book collectors, either in the wider or narrower sense of that word-even collectors of musical books. Consequently, their interest in book-plates, or exlibris, may be purely academic or even non-existent. Nevertheless, it is pleasant to record that many musicians and music-lovers rejoice in the possession of fine libraries, and have given their books a personal and possessive character, in identifying them by personal bookplates, often of great artistic beauty and frequently designed by distinguished artists. The book-plate, or exli'bris, in the form of a label or emblem pasted into a book as a sign of ownership, came into use not long after the first appearance of printed books themselves. Often designed by such great artists as Diirer, Cranach, Holbein, and the Little Masters, they were first used by scholars and by wealthy owners of libraries housed in great estates. But the use of musical book-plates is comparatively modern. It must be remembered that facilities for the hearing and enjoyment of music by greater numbers, and the musical education of a large class of cultured persons, are developments of the 18th and 19th centuries. Even in the 18th century, musical performances on a larger scale depended mainly on the wealthy nobility, who gave concerts with their own privately subsidized musicians for themselves and their friends, many of whom cared not a fig for books or book-plates. But with the fairly recent attaining of a love of music on the part of many persons of broad general culture, with whom the collecting and possessing of books was an elementary matter, it was only natural that they should express their enthusiasm for music by some suitable symbol in the book-plates they pasted into their treasured volumes, just as they indicated their other tastes by some other appropriate symbols in these book-plates. Often their absorption in music went so far as to cause them to commission the making of a separate and distinctly musical book-plate for their musical volumes or scores.