What if I need to find Beethoven Manuscripts?

The Morgan Library and Museum, in New York, has a website called Music Manuscripts Online - it could be just what you need!  Why not take a look?  (We've saved this link at our Library Music Portal on Moodle, so it's there when needed.  Like for your forthcoming Beethoven essay, maybe?)

http://www.themorgan.org/music

From the website:- "The goal of the Music Manuscripts Online project has been to create and to provide online access to high-quality images and descriptions of music manuscripts owned by The Morgan Library & Museum. Works by J. S. Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Fauré, Haydn, Liszt, Mahler, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Puccini, Schubert, and Schumann, among many others, can be viewed on these pages. Images and descriptions of these manuscripts will be available on the Morgan’s Web site for study by scholars, musicians, and the general public."

You know what Urtext is - but have you tried locating a Manuscript or early Imprint?

RISM is the website you're looking for!  (It stands for Repertoire Internationale des Sources Musicales)

Click here for the search page.

Have you ever seen a mediaeval plainsong manuscript?

Even if you never look at a piece of plainsong again, these are fabulous images. Take a look, and wonder at the craftsmanship of the monks who copied this … (Sibelius software, eat your heart out!).

St Andrews Special Collections posted: "I didn’t intend to write about the gradual at all for this post, I just happened to be looking at it one day when it was out for Tom Wilkinson the chapel organist to see. He is going to conduct the chapel choir in singing one of the Kyrie settings for a c"  .  Read more ...

Makes me almost nostalgic for my days as a mediaevalist Masters student!!

University of Glasgow and National Library of Scotland: Burns manuscripts

Robert Burns Manuscripts

News of a major manuscript digitisation project at the University of Glasgow.  Watch this development!

Beethoven manuscripts and sketches digitised

Beethoven MSS and sketches online at two American libraries:- 

• Morgan Library and Museum. Music Manuscripts online.  Here's the Beethoven direct link.
• The Juilliard Manuscript Collection.  Again, here's the Beethoven link.

I think you'll agree with me these are fantastic resources, and they'll be great when Christina Guillaumier leads our undergraduates' research into original Beethoven sources. I'll "catalogue" both websites online, so the links will be permanently in our catalogue when you need them.

And how did I get these gems?  I asked my music library colleagues on Twitter, and got a quick response from the Yale Music Library.  (and that, my friends, is the value of so-called social networking.  Or should we call it socio-professional networking?)

NB RSAMD becomes Royal Conservatoire of Scotland tomorrow, 1st September.  The catalogue link will change to http://prism.talis.com/rcs/