Historical music materials

The Special Collections Department of Kassel University Library owns 4100 volumes of musical materials (almost 800 music manuscripts and about 3300 prints up to 1850). These are essentially arranged chronologically and not separated according to manuscripts and prints. Of these holdings, the music material from the heyday of the Kassel court orchestra (late 16th to mid 17th century) stands out as a cohesive historical complex and particularly due to its high quality of content: the approximately 600 part books contain more than 23,000 different pieces of music, including numerous unica. [Read more]

In 1881, Carl Israël was the first to record the entire music collection of the court orchestra. In 2005, Angelika Horstmann presented a modern catalog of the music printed by the Kassel court chapel between 1550 and 1650. The music prints, which have only been newly acquired in recent decades, have so far only been partially recorded in RISM, but have been completely recorded in a card catalog. It is located in the reading room of the Special Collections.

The music manuscripts of the State Library were described by Clytus Gottwald in 1997 almost completely (a few pieces of marginal importance are missing) according to DFG guidelines. A search in RISM is not possible for them.