Transcripts of Dramatic Musical Works in Full Score
TRANSCRIPTS OF DRAMATIC MUSICAL WORKS IN FULL SCORE AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MUSIC DIVISION Compiled by Susan Clermont Senior Music Specialist Library of Congress Music Division A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TRANSCRIPTS OF DRAMATIC MUSICAL WORKS IN FULL SCORE AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS This bibliography comprises close to 700 transcripts of dramatic musical works in full score copied from original music manuscripts and early imprints for the Library of Congress’s Music Division between 1903 and 1939. The original sources were located in over three dozen European libraries in Austria, Belgium, France, Great Britain, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Russia. The majority of the operas cited in this document date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; about fifteen percent are reproductions of nineteenth-century works. Also included in this bibliography are transcripts of incidental music for dramas, melodramas, ballets, and pantomimes (see Appendix B). Finally, Appendix C comprises a short list of instrumental works, mostly for viola da gamba, that were transcribed over a two-year period when the parameters of this project were provisionally broadened. In 1902, a new set of guidelines for the systematic development of the newly-reorganized Music Division’s collections was instituted: opera immediately received a considerable share of attention because, “the peculiar condition of opera in the United States seemed to demand that a center of reference and research be created for the students of opera.” [Oscar Sonneck, Dramatic Music: Catalogue of Full Scores…, 1908] Accordingly, a series of “want lists” were compiled; however, when it was determined after a comprehensive search that hundreds of items included on the Music Division’s desiderata list for operas in full score were unprocurable in manuscript or print versions, the option of contracting copyists to generate transcripts was explored.
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