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The Rare Collections

Kia Hedell, Librarian

phone: +46 8 519 554 33
fax:      +46 8 519 554 05
email: rarecoll@muslib.se

Newly catalogued manuscipts can be found in the Online catalogue (search on Document type: Manuscript music). The vast majority are only searchable in the card catalogue (accessible at the Rare materials librarian's office on the 3rd floor)

The Library also houses the international IAML archives.

Search for words in the Rare Collections finding aids

The early collections count their beginnings from 1771, when, almost immediately after its foundation, the Royal Swedish Academy of Music started building a library. The Academy Secretary served as librarian and archivist, and the library - which occupied a cupboard in his office - was kept open one hour a week for the fellows of the Academy. They were encouraged to donate, sell or bequeath music and books, and the holdings soon outgrew the cupboard. Today the rare (pre-1850) printed music editions and manuscripts comprise some 30,000 items, not counting the Royal Opera deposit. In addition there are some 15,000 letters.

15th-century Processional, from a French  convent for Dominican nuns (16 x 11 cm)   (for a higher resolution, click on the pictures)

16th-century Spanish  Antiphoner, vellum manuscript in black, red, blue and gold, with leather-covered boards and metal fittings (86 x 60 cm!)

Among the treasures are a Haydn symphony (no. 49) in autograph, a 4-page sketch for Mozart's Clemenza di Tito, a few Beethoven sketches (plus his letter of thanks to the Academy upon his election in 1822 - after having been passed over in favour of Méhul in 1815, a fact of of which he was happily unaware). But it is the extent and comprehensiveness of the collections rather than individual unique items that make the Library an indispensable source for the study of European music of the 18th and early 19th centuries. The publications of the Dutch and German publishing firm of Hummel¹⁾ are particularly well represented.

The Library serves as the Swedish RISM centre [page in Swedish only] and has completed the cataloguing of all the relevant Swedish music, printed as well as manuscript. Our copy of the RISM card file contains some 35,000 entries (12,000 prints, 23,000 manuscripts), arranged both by composer and by owning library. In addition, there is a card catalogue of nearly 60,000 coded musical incipits.

The holdings also include a great number of personal archives and collections of autograph music manuscripts of Swedish composers from the 18th through the 20th century.

A catalogue by Kenneth Sparr of the Library´s holdings of music for the "Swedish lute" is available online.

"Project Runeberg", the Swedish counterpart of Project Gutenberg, has published a few samples of digitized music from the library´s early collections. More are to come.

Notable early collections include:²⁾

The Stockholm German Church Collection, donated by the German congregation in 1874
Sacred and secular European vocal music, from the repertoire of the church and its associated school in the 16th and 17th centuries. It comprises 103 printed part books, a few mss. Beside the Court orchestra, the German (St. Gertrud) Church was the most important music institution in the capital, which had a large German population.

The Sack Collection, bought in 1959
After Gabriel Sack  (1697-1751). Mainly French opera: 44 volumes containing 36 printed scores from Lully to Rameau; also chamber music. A book of German lute tablature from the end of the 16th century.

The Alströmer Collection, deposited in 1949³⁾
231 printed compositions and some 700 mss., primarily after Patrick Alströmer (1733-1840), a nobleman and keen musical Liebhaber.

Database
The Roman Collection, present arrangement from 1929
The collection of autograph and manuscript music associated with the  "Father of Swedish Music" Johan Helmich Roman (1694-1758) was built up over the years by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music and its library since 1771. The most important contributions stem from a donation of A. Holmberg in 1858 and items transferred from the Utile Dulci Collection. The Roman Collection contains almost all of the composer's extant works in autographs or contemporary copies, and is the foundation for all subsequent studies and work lists. It also contains many items falsely ascribed to Roman. The collection was never catalogued, nor is there a separate inventory. Instead, the thematic catalogues by P. Vretblad ⁴⁾, later superseded by   I. Bengtsson ⁵⁾ and A.L. Holm ⁶⁾ , both of which deal extensively with questions of authenticity, have been used . They are now replaced as finding aids (but not as bibliographical tools) by the database

The Leuhusen Collection, bought in 1930
Instrumental music from the mid-18th century, partly from Carl Leuhusen's (1724-1795) time as Secretary to the Swedish Legation in Spain.

The Hallardt Collection, bought in 1795
18th-century manuscript and printed music (the vocal music alone numbers more than 560 items) and music literature, 1660s to 1790s, from the estate of Johan Fredrik Hallardt (ca 1726-1794), postmaster in the then Swedish town of Wismar and an avid music collector and lexicographer.

The Utile Dulci Collection, donated ca 1800
An extensive collection mainly of 18th-century instrumental music in print and manucript: the repertoire of a Stockholm literary and musical society that was a precursor of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. It is dispersed in the Library, but a database reconstructing the collection in its original state is in progress.

The d'Otrante Collection, donated in 1858
French and Italian opera in print and manuscript, ca 1780-1858 after Joseph Fouché d'Otrante, noted revolutionary and Napoleon's minister of police: more than 100 scores and 17 volumes of single arias and ensembles

The Oxenstierna Collection, donated in 1860
Opera 1750-1858 of all kinds: more than 300 scores, 800 vocal scores, a large number of arias and ensembles

The Fallén Collection, bought in 1961
Chamber music, opera arias and ensembles in print and manuscript, collected by the entomologist, professor Carl Fredrik Fallén  (1764-1830).

The Mazer Collection, donated in 1847
A vast collection of instrumental music in print and manuscript from 1750 onwards. The library of Johan Mazer (1790-1847), a Stockholm merchant and founder of a private chamber music society (which still exists). Probably one of the most extensive in Europe, it includes a contemporary manuscript thematic catalogue in 7 volumes (Brook 1997: 1256). The collection comprises 471 duets, 409 trios, 768 quartets, 597 quintets and lager ensembles, scores of 210 orchestral works, parts to 407, further 340 concerti grossi and solo concertos. There are also scores and parts to 250 choral works with orchestra, and 232 vocal scores.⁷⁾
Further instalments were received on deposit from the Society in the 1980s, mostly 19th-century materials including several Swedish works in manuscript, in all some 500 items. Inventories are available in the library.  

The Fryklund Collection, bequest in 1965
The Library owns the music in large collection of Daniel Fryklund, most of it  housed at the Stockholm Music Museum. The  somewhat eclectic collection includes 16th-century printed music, album leaves in the hands of numerous composers, and an extensive collection of printed guitar music from the early 19th century. Read Kenneth Sparr's article on a new work by Sor and an overview (in Swedish) of eighteenth century dissertations in the Fryklund collection from Dokumenterat 39 (ss. 31-51).

The Boije Collection, donated in 1924
Guitar music in printed editions from the early 19th century and mss. (e.g., autographs by Johann Kaspar Mertz). Together with the Fryklund collection it forms a substantial body of such music, nicely complemented by the Rischel och Birket-Smith collections in the Royal Library in Copenhagen. The Boije Collection has now been digitized in its entirety.

The Royal Opera deposit
The repertoire of the Stockholm Opera (known as Kungl. teatern, the Royal Theatre) from its foundation in 1773 to the mid-19th century. Measuring some 400 metres of of scores and parts (not limited to dramatic music), it is an essential source for the history of music in Sweden during more than a century.

The Berwald Collection
The collection of autograph music by Franz Berwald (1796-1868) has been developed over the years, starting with the purchase of parts of his Nachlass by the Royal Swedish Academy of Music in 1869. By now, almost all of his original manuscript are in the collection. It is arranged in a classified order and forms the basis of the critical edition of the Berwald's collected works. It is not represented in the Library's card catalogue nor accessible online. A list of works is contained in  Franz Berwald : Die Dokumente seines Lebens, herausgegeben von Erling Lomnäs. Kassel : Bärenreiter, 1979.

Early music theory and history
A great number of the well and lesser known 17th- and 18th-century treatises and histories in original editions, as well as several periodicals.

The archives of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, deposited in 1987
Minutes, accounts, correspondence and other documents from the Academy's foundation in 1771 until 1971, a total of some 75 metres, also an essential source for any study of Swedish music and musical life.

1.Cari Johansson, J.J. & B. Hummel : music-publishing and thematic catalogues. Stockholm : Musikaliska akademiens bibliotek, 1972. 3 vols.
2. See further Cari Johansson, Något om de äldre samlingarna i Musikaliska akademiens bibliotek. In: Svenska musikperspektiv : minnesskrift vid Kungl. Musikaliska akademiens 200-årsjubileum 1971. Stockholm : Nordiska musikförl., 1971. P. 88-114  (with an English summary), and
Åke Davidsson, The collections of early music in Swedish libraries. In: Fontes artis musicae 33(1986):2, p. 135-145.
3. Cari Johansson, Studier kring Patrik Alströmers musiksamling. In: Svensk tidskrift för musikforskning 43(1961), p. 195-207 (with an English summary)
Jan Ling, Apollo Gothenburgensis : Patrick Alströmer och Göteborgs musikliv vid 1700-talets slut. In: Svensk tidskrift för musikforskning 81(1999), p. 53-94
Jan Ling, Vad säger oss en samling noter? : fria fantasier kring Patrick Alströmers notsamling. In: Inte bara katalogregler : festskrift till Anders Lönn : 5 mars 2003. Stockholm : Statens musikbibliotek, 2003, p.. 94-107
4. Patrik Vretblad, Johan Helmich Roman. Stockholm, 1914.
5. Ingmar Bengtsson, J.H. Roman och hans instrumentalmusik. (BeRI) Uppsala, 1955.
6. Anna Lena Holm, Tematisk förteckning över J.H. Romans vokalverk. (HRV) Stockholm, 1994
7. Cari Johansson, Något om Mazers musiksamling i Kungl. Musikaliska akademiens bibliotek. In: Svensk tidskrift för musikforskning 33(1951), s. [142]-146. Reprinted in: 150 år med kammarmusik. Stockholm : Mazerska kvartettsällskapet, [1999].
Bengt Malmros, Mazerska samlingens ABC : Mazers musikaliska världsbild och den praktiska nyttan av hans musikaliesamling idag. In: 150 år med kammarmusik, p. 142-147