Reviewed by: Dommusikarchiv Salzburg (A-SD). Thematischer Katalog der musikalischen Quellen, Reihe A. ed. by Eva Neumayr und Lars E. Laubhold Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl Dommusikarchiv Salzburg (A-SD). Thematischer Katalog der musikalischen Quellen, Reihe A. Bearbeitet von Eva Neumayr und Lars E. Laubhold unter der Projektleitung von Ernst Hintermaier, RISM Arbeitsgruppe Salzburg. Wien: Hollitzer Verlag, 2018. (Schriftenreihe des Archivs der Erzdiözese Salzburg, 17.) [xx, 952 p. ISBN 978-3-99012-509-0 (hardcover) €145.00; ISBN 978-3-99012-511-3 (e-book) €124.99] It does not happen very often that a research project is rooted in a crime case. An earlier article in this journal (Hans Spatzenegger, 'Entwendete Musikalien aus dem Besitz des Domchors in Salzburg', Fontes Artis Musicae 25, no. 2 [April–June 1978]: 152–156) reports that about 600 music books and scores were stolen from the Salzburg Cathedral archive in the 1960s. Although most of the objects could be traced and restored, the list of still-missing items, given in the appendix with the hope to identify them in antiquarian bookshops or auction catalogues is impressive. As a consequence of these events, the whole library was transferred to the better secured and better equipped archive of the archdiocese of Salzburg (Konsistorialarchiv), and a cataloguing process of the collection started. Financed by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), detailed bibliographic data based on a former card index have been integrated into RISM between 2007 and 2014. The research group responsible for this, the so-called RISM Arbeitsgruppe Salzburg, consisted of Ernst Hintermaier, an expert on music history of the Salzburg court chapel, and his two collaborators, Eva Neumayr and Lars E. Laubhold. The present catalogue is an edited offprint from the RISM database. The catalogue lists all items with the shelf number A in the Dommusikarchiv that are mostly manuscript parts of the Salzburg court [End Page 372] chapel and other local ensembles active at the Cathedral up to 1841, the founding year of the Dom-Musikverein and Mozarteum. The oldest manuscripts in this collection stem from the second half of the seventeenth century, a continuous transmission starts a hundred years later, in the second half of the eighteenth century. The collected repertoire comprises works by Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, Johann Ernst Eberlin, Leopold Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (twenty-six entries, several parts with notes by him and his father's hand) and Michael Haydn, the so called 'Salzburger Haydn'. It documents the music performance practice embedded in the liturgy of the Salzburg Cathedral. The catalogue is primarily organised according to composers and their works in alphabetical order and provides a detailed description of 2,838 items. It starts with Adlgasser and ends with Wölfl, with 'Anonyma' added at the end. In addition, thirty-five manuscript collections relating to works that are already listed in the composer/work section are designated with individual numbers. The last sixty pages of the book are most important for the practical use of the catalogue. They contain registers for titles and text incipits, names of persons involved, shelfmarks, and watermarks. When cataloguing began, problems with work identities occurred, specifically in music consisting of several movements. For example, vespers could be understood as a cycle of numbers, including the four psalm settings at its centre. In many cases, however, the first and last piece, Dixit Dominusand Magnificat, are interpreted as individual works. The editors of the catalogue based their decision on the physical state of the source material: where the numbers are notated together within a single part, it is considered as one work with several movements; where the numbers are copied in individual sets of parts, the material counts as a collection. This practical procedure is perfectly understandable when sorting the musical sources and having the material in hand, but it leaves a feeling of inconsistency when one considers concepts and organisation of musical works in larger dimensions. This general problematic issue is addressed by the current discussion about norm data for works. While norm data for persons and places are already available (GND in German-speaking countries, VIAF international), the development of norm data for musical works is an ongoing project with high priority for library...
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May 20, 2024
S L Kapoor 
Open Access