Beginning with August II, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, and continuing for at least four generations through his son August III and his Habsburg consort Maria Josepha, their children and their grandchildren, the intelligent patronage and courtly interest in music and its performance has endowed Dresden with music collections that parallel the city's magnificent architecture and collections of art and porcelain. Throughout these generations music both sacred and secular reflected the court's awareness of contemporary musical styles and ideas. Births, weddings, anniversaries and name days were celebrated with new musical compositions, and important musical items were dedicated to court members (including Bach's Kyrie and Gloria, bwv232/I). Following their deaths, the musical estates of Dresden court and church composers – Johann David Heinichen, Jan Dismas Zelenka, Giovanni Alberto Ristori and concertmaster Johann Georg Pisendel – were acquired by Queen and Electress Maria Josepha for church and royal collections. Sacred and secular music of the long-serving Kapellmeister Johann Adolph Hasse also is well represented in Dresden. Moreover, marriages connected the court of Dresden with those of Naples, Vienna, Munich and Versailles, which led to a flow of music between those centres. Financial records held at the Saxon Hauptstaatsarchiv in Dresden testify to the costs involved in making copies of the operas, cantatas and sacred music that were both sent and received by court members. In particular, it was the women of Dresden's court who performed and collected music, and offered enlightened patronage to numerous composers. Foremost among them was Maria Antonia Walpurgis (1724–1780). Born in Munich, Maria Antonia was the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles VII and his consort, the Habsburg Maria Amalia – Maria Josepha's sister. Thus Maria Antonia was the niece of Saxon Electress and Queen of Poland Maria Josepha, whose daughter-in-law she became upon marriage in 1747 to her cousin, Saxon Electoral Prince Frederic Christian (1722–1763). His early death led to a long widowhood for Maria Antonia, but one filled with creative activity. (Her artistry as a composer, poetess, singer and harpsichordist had already seen her honoured by membership of the Accademia degli Arcadi of Rome.) Not surprisingly, many of the papers presented at this conference investigated and celebrated aspects of the life, works and legacy of this extraordinary woman.
The conference (Collecting – Music-Making – Research. On Dresden Court Music of the Eighteenth Century) opened with welcoming remarks from the General Director of the Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB), Thomas Bürger. He gave an overview of the most recent of three projects of the SLUB Music Department that are now nearing completion: Die Notenbestände der Dresdner Hofkirche und der Königlichen Privat-Musikaliensammlung aus der Zeit der sächsisch-polnischen Union. Erschließung, Digitalisierung und Internetpräsentation. The focus of this project, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), lies in the detailed cataloguing and complete digitization of these sources, comprehensive examination of the scribes, papers and watermarks, and publication in RISM online.
Barbara Wiermann, Head of the Music Department at SLUB, introduced the topic of the opening session, ‘Höfische Musiksammlungen – wissenschaftliche Musikbibliotheken’ (Court Music Collections – Academic Music Libraries), as well as the other major occasion being celebrated in 2016: the two hundredth anniversary of the Music Department of SLUB, whose origins may be traced to the transfer of the Dresden court music holdings to a modern public library. She then led the following discussions of papers that were concerned with significant examples of the manner in which great European music collections were built, and the consequences of these collections for the development of musicology. Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann (Max-Planck-Institut für empirische Ästhetik, Frankfurt am Main) drew attention to the activities of collectors such as Georg Poelchau (1773–1836), Raphael Georg Kiesewetter (1773–1850) and Fortunato Santini (1778–1681), extending to Anthony van Hoboken (1887–1983). An outline of the origins of music departments in libraries such as those of Berlin, Dresden, Munich and Vienna – each established during the same period when historical performance materials were being transferred from performing institutions to court libraries – was given by Thomas Leibnitz (Music Department, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek). The early nineteenth century saw a new perception of the status of music, which he attributed to compositions being accepted as ‘works of art’, the greater weight given to musical texts, the ‘physiognomic’ (or physical) character of music manuscripts, the new social status of the composer and the emergence of bourgeois concert life. In Vienna, Count Moritz Dietrichstein, as Supervisor of Court Music (Hofmusikgraf), had noticed that old imperial court chapel performance materials from the eras of Leopold I and Karl VI were in a state of neglect. When, in 1826, this count became head of the imperial court library, he arranged for the transfer of these materials to the library, thereby laying the foundations for the present-day Department of Music of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, successor to the former court library.
The session continued with Steffen Voss (RISM, Munich) discussing the music culture at the Bavarian Habsburg court as mirrored in the music holdings of the Bavarian State Library (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) in Munich, a collection containing materials from the era of Orlando di Lasso until the nineteenth century. While much church music is missing, scores of operas written for the court theatre from 1715 till the end of the eighteenth century are preserved, as well as parts of the court's private music collections. It was noted that the surviving manuscript catalogue compiled for Electress Maria Anna of Bavaria (Prince Frederic Christian's sister) resembles aspects of catalogues from the Saxon court's private music collections, especially those of her sister-in-law, Maria Antonia Walpurgis. A comprehensive overview of Dresden's court music collection and its history was given by Ortrun Landmann, long-time associate of the former Sächsische Landesbibliothek (now SLUB), who discussed the types of ensembles found at the Dresden court and the subsequent history of their music collections. Losses through the conflicts and politics that affected Dresden from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries were considered – the greatest occurring during the Seven Years War (1756–1763), when music from the collection of August II (which reached back to the sixteenth century) was destroyed. More recently, great quantities of music were transferred to the former Soviet Union immediately after the Second World War – much of which remains untraceable. The day closed with a conducted tour of the department that provides the digitization service for the project, led by Anne Weser of SLUB's digitization centre.
Friday morning's presentations, on the theme of ‘Sammlerpersönlichkeiten des Dresdner Hofes’ (Individual Collectors at the Dresden Court), were concerned with examples of Dresden's outstanding music collections and those court members responsible for the gathering of these. Christine Fischer (Basel), biographer of Maria Antonia, investigated examples from the collection of this princess to determine how she interpreted strategies of patronage, concluding that these were characterized by a desire to be aware of current innovations in music. New information on the music collection of the Dresden court was revealed through examination of the diaries and account books of Saxon Crown Prince Frederic Christian by Jóhannes Ágústsson, an independent Icelandic scholar. Through payments for musical items acquired by the prince during his Grand Tour (1738–1740) and on other occasions as well, Ágústsson presented a reconstruction of Frederic Christian's music collection, which eventually merged with the holdings of his wife, Maria Antonia. Nastasja Gandolfo (PhD candidate, Hochschule für Musik Würzburg) considered the reasons for certain cantatas being included in Maria Antonia's collection. In many cases the princess was either the author of the text or else she was the dedicatee. Among other cases, cantatas by Giovanni Battista Ferrandini (Maria Antonia's teacher in Munich) had been sung by the princess in her youth, and the Venetian copies of cantatas by Pergolesi and Benedetto Marcello were probably acquired out of curiosity and interest. Nina Eichholz from the DFG project discussed three extant, albeit under-investigated, inventories of Maria Antonia's music collections that were compiled in 1747, 1753 and c1780. Physical appearance, order of entries, dating and the repertory entered into these inventories have made it possible to detect surviving sources. In terms of range and quality, this entire personal collection, which embraces manuscripts and prints from the years 1666 to 1780, may be seen as one of the most important of the era.
The afternoon session began with the topic ‘Quellen- und Repertoiretransfer im Umfeld der Dresdner Hofkirchenmusik’ (Transfer of Sources and Repertoire in the Context of the Dresden Court Church Music). My paper (Janice B. Stockigt, University of Melbourne) examined the transmission in the 1720s of sacred music between Bohemia and Dresden as seen in the personal inventory of Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745), whose abbreviated notes to accompany several entries of masses and works for the Office of Vespers suggest a private code being used by the composer to remind himself of the Bohemian origins of received sources. Alina Żórawska-Witkowska (Uniwersytet Warszawski) outlined the great problem of determining which items of sacred music were heard in Warsaw during the reign of August III – a situation made almost impossible because of the lack of musical sources and catalogues in the Warsaw collection. The return to Dresden of all private property following the deaths of August II and August III can only lead to hypotheses about sacred music once held there during the era of the Polish–Saxon Union.
The fascinating topic of physical aspects of Dresden's royal music collection was considered in the session ‘Methodische Ansätze in der Quellenerschließung’ (Methodical Approaches to the Indexing of Sources). In a joint presentation Thomas-Klaus Jacob (Historical Prints section, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) spoke of the luxurious papers seen in Dresden's royal music collection, while Matthias Hageböck (Klassik Stiftung, Weimar) discussed the art of those bookbinders responsible for the beautiful bindings, especially those from Maria Antonia's music collection. From an examination of more than 1,400 manuscripts by Claudia Lubkoll from the DFG project team, more than 6,500 different papers (almost half originating in Saxony, followed by papers from Italy) and approximately 1,200 watermarks have now been registered – data that will enhance future scholarship. The day ended with a concert of music from the Dresden collections led by Susanne Scholz (Hochschule für Musik and Theater Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Leipzig) and Federico Maria Sardelli (Istituto Italiano Antonio Vivaldi, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice) with students from the Leipzig institution. Vocal works by Caldara, Filippo Ruge, Maria Antonia and Hasse were interspersed with instrumental music by Telemann, Pietro Domenico Paradies and Heinichen, to which was joined the latest addition to the Vivaldi Ryom work list (rv820): the sonata for violin, cello and basso continuo attributed to Vivaldi, which would be discussed in detail by Sardelli later in the conference.
The concluding session, ‘Repertoirefragen: Komponisten und Gattungen’ (Questions of Repertoire: Composers and Genres) opened with a report by Christin Seidenberg (PhD candidate, Universität Koblenz-Landau) on her study of the rich fund of Antonio Lotti's music held in Dresden. Important new information on datings and provenance of Lotti's operas, sacred music and madrigals has been revealed by her detailed examination of these sources. Roberto Scoccimarro from the DFG project considered the manuscripts of arias from the royal private music collection of Maria Antonia, works often used for her own performances. The entire body of music reveals her preference for the Metastasian style of aria, although those from ‘reform’ and comic operas also exist in her collection. Many problems of attribution are found within this repertoire dating from 1710 to c1780 (Giovanni Battoni is shown to be Giovanni Battista Patoni, for example), and several arias can be shown to have had their texts altered. The paper from Andrea Zedler (PhD candidate, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz) considered twelve cantatas (D-Dl Mus. 2170-J–1) composed by Antonio Caldara for Saxon Electoral Prince Friedrich August II during the latter's Viennese courtship of Maria Josepha. Reference to Viennese court sources not only enables one to date these works as coming from 1719, but the scribe of the dedication has been identified. Stylistically, these cantatas appear to be closer to those Caldara composed for Prince Francesco Maria Ruspoli in Rome than to the cantata repertoire written for the imperial court. The conference was brought to a close with Federico Maria Sardelli's paper on the anonymous sonata held in SLUB: Mus. 2-Q-6. Sardelli has identified this source as one of Vivaldi's earliest works (now rv820) and concludes that it was prepared by the fifteen-year-old Pisendel during his studies in Ansbach (1698–1703). This score draws attention to a ‘nucleus of manuscripts’ with the same provenance: Ansbach and Pisendel. Drawing upon his research and Vivaldian concordances, Sardelli gave an overview of the latest misattributions to Vivaldi and works considered to be imitations that are held by SLUB.
Further information on the three cataloguing and digitization projects carried out by SLUB – the royal and Hofkirche collections, the Schrank II project and the opera archive –may be found at:
