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Obiter Scripta: Essays, Lectures, Articles, Interviews and Reviews on Music, and Other Subjects.(Review)
By Albi Rosenthal. Oxford: Offox Press; Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2000. [viii, 472 p. ISBN 0-9506989-3-8 (U.K.); 0-8108-3861-3 (U.S.). $60.]
For nearly half a century, Albi Rosenthal has been preeminent among the world's music antiquarian dealers. One of my earliest recollections of his name dates back to the mid-1950s, when Richard S. Hill slyly assured me that one of the most important things any music bibliographer needed to know was PRImrose 1488, this being the phone number of the Belsize Park Gardens shop in London. The seventy-five writings collected in this book tell us why.
Several of the essays are classics. These include the brief overview of the history of the music antiquarian trade (pp. 6-18), Rosenthal's report on the discovery of the La Clayette manuscript (pp. 101-41), and some of the Mozart and Monteverdi studies (pp. 198-257). Among the most valuable, to my thinking, is a talk given at the Bodleian Library in 1952 (pp. 333-42), previously unpublished. Rosenthal may have been fairly new to the music antiquarian world at that time, but he described the goals and resources of music bibliography with impressive mastery. This was a world inhabited by librarians, collectors, scholars, and dealers, and the underlying theme in this essay, and in the whole book, is that they are all at their best and happiest when they are intermixed. Most of us, whether established in or about to enter any of the specialties in that day, would have been better off if we had attended this talk. Even today, anyone who wants to be reminded now what the world was like fifty years ago needs to dip into this fine mixture of insight and delight. (Until I read this talk, I must confess, I had never heard the story of the composer Bergier: see p. 334.)
The essays are useful lessons in other things as well. Seeing them in one book may bring ...
- Mozart manuscripts reunited.
- Newspaper article from: The Evening Standard (London, England) January 11, 2006 700+ words
...remained separate until the lower portion was acquired by the British Library in 1953. They were reunited by music antiquarian Albi Rosenthal. A catalogue of Mozart's work is on display to mark his 250th birthday and it is also available to see...
- Everything in the garden is lovely
- Newspaper article from: The Independent - London GILLIAN WIDDICOMBE July 18, 1994 700+ words
...inventory of costumes - complete with buttons and bows, spangles and heron feathers - made for Eszterhaza, and an article by Albi Rosenthal on Haydn's girlfriends. Next, food. Serious, too. Those who picnic with table-loths and candelabra have colonised...
- "Infinite riches in a little room": the music collections in the Pierpont...
- Magazine article from: Notes March 1, 1999 700+ words
...committed to the growth of the music collection and adept at raising money to that end, and to dealers - foremost among them Albi Rosenthal, the doyen of antiquarian music dealers (and the grandson of Leo Olschki, from whom Morgan bought Beethoven's opus...
- Trois pieces pour quatuor a cordes: Skizzen, Fassungen, Dokumente, Essays.
- Magazine article from: Notes Walsh, Stephen June 1, 1996 700+ words
...this remarkable facsimile of the Three Pieces for String Quartet, produced to mark the eightieth birthday (in 1994) of Albi Rosenthal, the charming eminence grise of the Sacher Stiftung, who was largely responsible for ensuring that the collection actually...
- The Borel manuscript: a new source of seventeenth-century French harpsichord...
- Magazine article from: Notes Moroney, Davitt September 1, 2005 700+ words
...whose music library is also now in Berkeley; the manuscript later passed into the collection of antiquarian music dealer Albi Rosenthal in London. (2) Twenty-seven of the more than one hundred pieces are ascribed to composers in the manuscript, leaving...
- THE ANTIQUARIAN MUSIC MARKET.
- Magazine article from: Notes LUBRANO, JOHN LUBRANO, JUDE March 1, 2000 700+ words
...appraisals. The advent of the fax machine and electronic mail have even further enhanced the internationalization of the music antiquarian's business. A great deal of what was offered on the antiquarian market until, say, ten or fifteen years ago was sold...
- Naples in the Eighteenth Century: the Birth and Death of a Nation State.(Book...
- Magazine article from: Canadian Journal of History Miller, Cecilia August 1, 2002 700+ words
...capital and the provinces, the court, the economy, the Enlightenment, the judicial system, intellectuals and academies, music, antiquarian studies, and revolution. There is a considerable emphasis in this book on the experiences in the university, in the...
- Early Lithographed Music: A Study Based on the H. Baron Collection.
- Magazine article from: Notes Krummel, D.W. September 1, 1997 700+ words
...and the publishing record. It also includes a catalogue of the music lithography collection assembled by the late London music antiquarian, Hermann Baron, now at the University of Reading, whose roughly twelve hundred items chronologically emphasize the first...