Personal papers

Scope of the collection

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek safeguards a total of around 400 sets of personal papers and person-related collections of greatly varying volumes from the field of music.

Searching for personal papers

These holdings are managed by two separate departments, which is also applicable to their use: The Department of Music is in charge of music manuscripts, printed sheet music and sound carriers, while the Division of Literary Archives and Autographs of the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books is responsible for all other contents of personal papers, such as correspondence, writings, documents, image materials, etc.

Overview of the personal papers held by the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books

Around 350 of the sets of personal papers of musicians are preserved in their entirety or partly in the Department of Music. The alphabetic overview offers brief personal information about the decedent and about the cataloguing.

Overview of personal papers kept in the Department of Music  (PDF, 323 KB)

The major part of the personal papers has been fully catalogued on document level. The music manuscripts can be found in the conventional catalogue (card catalogue) of music manuscripts, the sheet music and sound carriers have been entered in BSB DISCOVER!. Numerous sets of personal papers have furthermore already been entered in their entirety or partially in the RISM OPAC.

Concerning a further large group of personal papers, there are registers in the form of lists, which are partly available in the form of PDF documents. Reference tools are available internally for further sets of personal papers. Only a small part of the collection has not yet been catalogued.

Digital versions

The autographic music manuscripts of the most prominent composers have been digitized in their entirety.

The digital copies of works no longer protected by copyright are accessible online:
Hugo Distler  –  Karl Amadeus Hartmann (with the approval of the heirs)  –  Michael Haydn  –  Adolf Jensen  –  Heinrich Kaminski  –  Gustav Mahler  –  Hans Pfitzner  –  Max Reger  –  Josef Rheinberger  –  Richard Strauss  –  Georg Josef Vogler  –  Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari

The digital copies of the following copyright-protected works are available in the Reading Room for Music/Maps/Images:
Carl Orff

Provenance

The provenance of sheet music from personal papers can frequently not be found in older catalogue descriptions in BSB DISCOVER!. A targeted search for the provenance (e.g. "personal papers of Hermann Reutter") is possible only in the case of more recent sets of personal papers.

Sound carriers

All sound carriers from personal papers have already been catalogued comprehensively and can be searched in BSB DISCOVER!, for which reason sound carriers are not indicated explicitly in the individual entries of personal papers.