Editing Robert Burns for the 21st Century - New Online Resource

The University of Glasgow has this week launched a great new resource about songs by Robert Burns. Editing Robert Burns for the 21st Century is an AHRC-funded Project to produce a multi-volume edition of the Works of Robert Burns. It's led by Kirsteen McCue,

Professor of Scottish Literature & Song Culture and Co-Director of the Centre for Robert Burns Studies in the Scottish Literature Department.

There's lots to explore.  It all started with this:- 

"The Centre for Robert Burns Studies at the University of Glasgow recently secured a major AHRC research grant to produce a multi-volume edition of Robert Burns’s work, which will be published by Oxford University Press. The project, ‘Editing Robert Burns for the 21st Century’, began in 2009, the 250th anniversary of the poet’s birth, and will take at least 15 years to complete."   Read more on the website!

http://burnsc21.glasgow.ac.uk/

On This Day ... 1808

Crusty, objectionable, fussy .... 

Joseph Ritson, compiler of Scotish Songs 

 

Scotish Songs

The reputed Scottish antiquarian Joseph Ritson died on this day, 3rd September 1808.  If he was fussy and argumentative, it's because he was deeply knowledgeable and wanted everything to be just right.  And he had no patience whatsoever with anyone who fabricated 'historic' Scottish culture, like Macpherson's Ossian tales.


Unfortunately, that made him very unpopular with a whole lot of people.  In spite of that, spare him a charitable thought today, because he wasn't all bad - just a bit difficult to get along with!

He compiled a two-volume collection of Scottish songs which was highly thought-of in its day.  The Whittaker Library has facsimiles of Ritson's two-volume Scotish Songs.  (Yes, that is the archaic spelling!)  

• Read more about Ritson and his work, in a posting Karen wrote in 2011.
• Ritson and Robert Burns both wrote about how Scottish song should be performed.  They were quoting a third antiquarian, William Tytler.  Read that story here ...

New Peters Edition of Faure Songs Wins Prize

Singers at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland will be aware that the Whittaker Library recently acquired several copies of Roy Howat's splendid new Faure song edition.  He won a prestigious prize for it!  We thought we'd share the glad tidings with our readers.  Roy comments,

"We’re delighted to learn that the new Peters edition of Fauré songs vol. 1 has received a “Best Edition” award at the Frankfurt Musikmesse this week:

http://www.best-edition.de/html/2015_preistraeger_02.htm

"We’re specially happy to see the jury blurb end by saying the new edition should see this repertoire better established in German concert repertoire.  And elsewhere, of course.

"Our collaborations with enthusiastic and skilled colleagues have made it possible, and if we’re feeling proud of this, it’s not just for us but also for Peters Edition, the RAM and the RCS."

224 years ago, this is what German Children Sang!

 Please Meet Placidus Partsch!

 We're attacking our cataloguing piles today!  Karen assigned herself a big pile of collected editions and rolled her sleeves up. At the bottom of the heap was Liedersammlung fur Kinder und Kinderfreunde am Clavier: Fruhlingslieder and Winterlieder, dating from 1791.  The introduction explains that the collection was compiled for children to sing, or for older children and adults to sing to younger ones.  So - this is intended as nursery repertoire, 1791-style!

It's fascinating!  The very first song is one set by Mozart - not the only one - and you might recognise the names of Vanhal and Hoffmann.  (The others are no longer exactly mainstream.)  The compiler, a man with the enviable name of Placidus Partsch, set himself the task of assembling 30 songs for each season, but only the spring and winter volumes survive.

You can find them in our catalogue HERE, and they're shelved as part of the Recent Researches in the Music of the Classical Era series, vol.95, published by A-R Editions.

• AR Editions book details
• Whittaker Library catalogue entry

Elegant Extracts from the early 1800s

Sorting through a shelf of assorted old music volumes, we found a tatty and comparatively uninviting old book which had never been catalogued.  However, the individual piano pieces and songs inside merited further investigation.  We invited our work-experience guest, Isla, to take a look at the contents. Here's Isla's report:- 

A Book Celebrating the Art of Composers in the early 1800s

 

Consisting of Airs with Variations, Rondos, Marches, Waltzes & Duets, this book is a truly valuable collection. The works within this compilation were bought separately by the original owner and then bound - so this book is unique, and the contents had never before been made into a collection to then be sold. 

Printed beautifully, this bound collection of music commemorates Haydn, Pleyel, Mozart, Kozeluch, Gyrowitz, Hofmeister and other talented composers, many of which had never before been published in Great Britain. 

Read a blogpost by Emma Greenwood, about historic bound music collections at Trinity Laban Conservatoire Library, here:-
 On the Pleasures and Sorrows of Cataloguing 19th Century Sheet Music

(Trinity Laban call these books "bound-with" volumes.  We call them Sammelband (plural, Sammelbände) or Collectors' volumes.  They're lovely, but hard work and often in rather dilapidated condition!)

Singers, there's going to be a new edition of Faure songs! Peters Edition ...

Researchers at the Royal Academy of Music are assisting with a new edition of Faure's

Wikipedia image

100+ songs for Peters Edition publishers.

Eminent pianist Roy Howat is editor.  Read more HERE on the RAM website.

Watch this space.  We'll get them as they come out, and the first copy is on its way to us ...

Now You Can Discover Belgian Music from World War I - Digital Access

The Royal Library of Belgium holds an interesting collection of music from the First World War, and the Europeana Collections 1914-1918 project is widening access to it with its digitization project.

Frederic Lemmers, Head of Digitization programs at the Royal Library, gave a presentation about this project to music librarians at the IAML conference in Antwerp earlier this summer. 

• Read Frédéric Lemmers' presentation:  "Music & First World War within the collections of the Royal Library of Belgium"

The Royal Library's selection of documents concerning music during the Great War is available on both the www.europeana.eu and www.europeana1914-1918.eu websites, the main European digital library and its specific thematic portal dedicated to the Great War.

Additionally, there are several collections of songbooks and music sheets from all parts of Europe, on the Europeana Collections 1914-1918 project website, where they've been listed by ten European national libraries. (See also : www.europeana-collections-1914-1918.eu).
Restricted access to the music corpus of the Royal Library of Belgium is also available HERE.
  

Frédéric Lemmers

Bibliothèque royale de Belgique (Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België)

4, Bd de l'Empereur - Keizerslaan

B-1000 Bruxelles - Brussel

tel.: +32.2.519.56.64

Website:- http://belgica.kbr.be