Who Visited Herr Henle?

An unusual link to share with you here - the digitized guest book of one of Germany's biggest music publishing houses.  It gives interesting insights into musical life in Germany between 1942 and 1979, with little comments, scribbled pictures and more.  Here's how Henle describe the book:- 

"Claudio Arrau, Yehudi Menuhin, Arthur Rubinstein - the founder of our publishing house Dr. Günter Henle and his wife Anne Liese often invited the most distinguished musicians of the time to their home.

From 1942 to 1979 they kept a guest book. We have now digitalized and transcribed it. In addition we have also compiled several indexes, as well as biographies of the artists who were their guests.

We would like to invite you to delve into this treasure trove with its insights into people, dates and relationships. You can view it in its entirety and free-of-charge online.
» to the guest book

There are also some treasures to be found amongst our new editions ...."

The Beauty of Belaieff, by Richard Beattie Davis

The historic Russian music publishing house, Belaieff, produced startlingly beautiful covers for their scores.  The Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland has today been gifted a copy of the late Richard Beattie Davis' book, The Beauty of Belaieff.  

Like the collection, the book itself is beautiful. 

•  More about the book itself HERE.
• Find it in our collection, HERE. 

Richard Beattie Davis (1922-2008) was an English musicologist and collector.  His collection is now in Florida Atlantis University - the Davis Music Collection.

Book Review

A lifetime’s dedicated research has gone into Richard Beattie Davis’s magnificent book, The Beauty of Belaieff.  Describing Mitrofan Petrovich Belaieff as ‘more an enabler than a creator’, Davis documents the impressive music publishing house that this wealthy timber merchant established in middle life.  Belaieff’s publishing output is in itself a record of an epoch in Russian music, and Davis’s book devotes chapters to each of the 18 composers that Belaieff promoted.

The publication in colour of over one hundred and fifty title pages makes this volume handsome enough to merit the epithet, ‘coffee-table book’ as well as being a serious study, for these illustrations both enhance and inform the extensive text.  Music title pages are a rather unique art-form, and although this volume is not a history of Belaieff’s commissioned art-work per se, it goes without saying that Davis does provide commentary on them.

Davis systematically collected Belaieff publications on a grand scale, and his research embraced published histories, reference works, a vast amount of correspondence between Belaieff and his composers, not to mention extensive library visits.  It is gratifying, and humbling, to consider that Davis's initial researches in Westminster Music Library, and then in other libraries, were to bear fruit in such an admirable monograph.  Books of this stature are a welcome endorsement of the importance of specialist music libraries to music-lovers and researchers, and underline not only their important function of retaining old and perhaps forgotten music for posterity, but also the ‘enabling’ role that their staff are able to offer.

Dr Karen E. McAulay   

 

Scotch Does Not Necessarily Mean Scottish

Find out what happens when a music librarian's alter ego - the musicologist - goes to town on an old Scots song collection - 

Thirty Favourite Scots Songs Untainted by the Caledonian Muse