The Music Collection of the Staats- Und Universitätsbibliothek, Hamburg: A Survey of its British Holdings Prior to the Second World War

Abstract

The extent of the music holdings of the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Hamburg, has never been revealed in print, and, except for a few recent publications dealing with a select number of its extant sources, there has been little comment about the losses it sustained during the Second World War (in 1919 the library's name was changed from ‘Stadtbibliothek’ to ‘Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek’, and in 1983 it acquired its present name ‘Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky‘). Prior to its dispersal and partial destruction during the Second World War, the Hamburg library's music collection compared favourably to other great music libraries of the day such as those in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. That the Hamburg library now possesses only a small quantity of its original holdings is a cause for much lament, but since detailed descriptions survive of all its pre-War materials, musicologists are afforded some remarkable insights into its sources, many of which have escaped scholarly attention; the descriptions are found in a manuscript catalogue compiled by the brilliant nineteenth-century bibliographer Arrey von Dommer (1828–1905). Dommer's catalogue reveals that in the late nineteenth century the Hamburg library possessed an extensive amount of music, both printed and manuscript, and that its collection of British music, though smaller than its holdings of German and Italian music, was very significant—the richness of its British materials reflects the particular interest of the collector Friedrich Chrysander (1826–1901), from whom much of the library's music was obtained.