MUSIC PERIODICALS, 1722-1940

Part 1: Eighteenth Century Music Periodicals from the Musikbibliothek der Stadt Leipzig

Part 2: Music Almanacs and Jahrbuchs, 1815-1940 from the Musikbibliothek der Stadt Leipzig

Translation of the Foreword and Introduction by Peter Krause to:

Musikperiodika - Zeitschriften, Jahrbucher, Almanache - Bibliographische Veröffentlichungen der Musikbibliothek der Stadt Leipzig

Journals and other periodicals make up an essential element of music literature. In the form of general music journals, they mirror musical life and contemporary musical attitudes more immediately and more extensively than any other publication by virtue of their actuality and their relatively large-scale multi-faceted nature. Thus, to the expert they represent a rich and indispensable source; periodicals moreover, have in general developed into one of the most important types of research publication. Similarly, in the age of audio and visual media, where information is relatively short-lived and is, in any case, not easily accessible as it is stored on tape or film reel archives, the journal is an important source because it is permanent and normally easily accessible. In recognition of these facts, musical bibliographical interest in periodicals has also steadily increased recently.

The Leipzig City Music Library has long been known to musicologists as an important source of music periodicals. Its collection in this field ranges from the first music journal ever published, Johann Mattheson's Critica Musica (1722-1725), right up to the present day. It has its origin in 18th and early 19th century periodicals from the music collections of the Leipzig City Library. However the largest part of the collection came from the Peter Music Library in Leipzig, affiliated in 1953. Since it was founded in 1894 and also in view of its musical bibliographical activities in the Peter Music Library Yearbook, the latter collected an extensive range of German and foreign language periodicals, which were however, of a predominantly musicological nature. The Leipzig City Music Library carries on these traditions while enriching them with new aspects appropriate to the interests and requirements of socialist musical culture, as for example, through a heightened emphasis on periodicals that were published in the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries. Their acquisition policy is aimed at making a representative selection (by international standards) from the variety of contemporary published music journals, with special focus on musicological periodicals.

Unfortunately, to date there has not been an accurate overview of the entire collection of journals at the Leipzig Music Library. Both the records of titles in the alphabetical catalogue and the second edition of the "Catalogue of the Peter Music Library”, published in 1910 compiled by Rudolf Schwartz, provided only an incomplete picture of the real state of the collection of older journals. The increased demands from musicology in the GDR and abroad made complete re-cataloguing necessary. As a result, the library is able to display this catalogue on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the founding of the German Democratic Republic.

The library's extraordinarily diverse and extensive stock of journals will from the outset, lend this publication the character of a technical bibliography which goes beyond an inventory. It contains for example, a near complete collection of 18th century music periodicals and an unusually large and abundant collection of music journals from the 19th century, which by both GDR and world standards, boasts numerous rarities and unique items. Hence the library's decision to carry out the planned Journal Inventory enabling its own bibliographical accuracy to act as the basis for further bibliographical projects and also at the same time complete I Fellinger's Inventory of 19th century Music Journals (1968). In the course of thorough research carried out by the Leipziger Collection for this bibliography - which gained rapid international significance not least because of evidence of its role as a source of discovery for musicology and library practice and organisation - although it was acknowledged that the concept was large scale and comprehensive, more detailed analysis proved that there were numerous mistakes, inconsistencies and omissions (for further reference, see P.Krause's critique in the Central Journal of Library Organisation and Practice Vol.83.1969, Pg 538ff). Inadequacies of this nature can, to a large extent, be traced back to insufficient preparation and assistance and also are not ultimately the fault of the libraries, as in the face of an abundance of titles, of which it is difficult to obtain an overview, the compiler of such a bibliography must largely depend on the information contained in other bibliographies, as well as in other library printed catalogues and card index catalogues. Recognition of this fact resulted in the task of publishing the Leipzig Music Library Inventory of Journals in a form which was basically bibliographical; also, thanks to this declaration of intent, an overlap with the more or less simultaneous manuscript of a collection inventory was avoided. The latter, covering all music periodicals printed since 1945 held in GDR libraries, was compiled by the German Democratic Republic States Group of the International Association of Music Libraries and was intended for publication.

On the basis of the publication in question, the staff at the Leipzig City Library hope and expect that intensive and effective use of what is a unique and highly specialised collection in the GDR, may however, allow greater appreciation of music journals by wide circles, whose importance is not underestimated, thanks to the solution and realisation of the problems and tasks presented at the second GDR Music Congress in 1972. To a great extent, the process, which is important for the socialist music culture of the GDR in numerous respects, demands the creative and critical acquisition of musical heritage as well as the evaluation of music periodicals by academics, teachers, interpreters and students. The music journals contain extensive and still under valued source material especially for the, to a great extent yet to be researched, complexities of the music of the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century also of the musical heritage of the Soviet Union and of the other socialist countries, as well as of our own socialist musical development.

The catalogue lists all music periodicals in the library's collection taking the concept of periodical in its broadest sense. For this reason year books, annual reports, information sheets and news sheets, as well as almanacs and calendars are catalogued, in addition to journals in the narrower sense. Single issues of music periodicals were also considered in so far as this seemed justifiable in view of their significance and probable rarity; also included were general arts journals with a permanent music section and all periodicals from the fields of the theatre and dance which are closely connected to music. Music which is published periodically, unless it was a question of regular supplements to music journals, but on the other hand no non-musical periodicals were considered. The selection process does deviate from normal practice in individual cases, such as, for example, when we look at publications such as the Bach Festival or Händel Festival books or the “Bayreuth” booklet as periodicals. In our opinion, these publications are closer to the concept of periodical than others which are classified as such in musicological literature, for example Johann Friedrich Daube’s Musical Dilettante (Vienna 1771-1773) or Joseph Martin Kraus' Truths Concerning Music (Frankfurt a M 1777 and 1779). A strict selection process was employed in order to counter the risk inherent in a procedure of this type that the whole flood of festival and programme books might be included in the bibliography of periodicals. The criterion for inclusion in our catalogue was a high proportion of scholarly contributions. The same applies to publications from companies while mere programme books were omitted. Moreover, I Fellinger catalogues includes titles of this nature in her bibliography of 19th century music periodicals.

The titles are arranged in alphabetical order, like the index conforming, to the draft version of the new rules on alphabetical cataloguing produced by the “Alphabetical Cataloguing” working party of the GDR Library Association's Commission for Cataloguing Matter and it is assumed that the user is familiar with these rules. For those who are not conversant with them, we should mention here that the principle is to arrange the titles mechanically according to their given word order without giving any consideration to their subtitles. At the beginning of a classification group all definite and indefinite articles and corresponding numerals and pronouns are ignored. Where titles (classification groups) serve the same purpose the year of publication assists with classification, the earlier publication date taking precedence. In this classification, reference is made as far as possible to the publication year of the first volume of a periodical, even if this itself is not in the library's collection. Entries under the publishing institutions and organisations were not included as they are in the index.

A single entry has the following structure and uses a hyphen to separate items:

1a) Title with subtitles and all alterations to titles.
1b) Publisher(s), editors, sub-editors etc. with all alterations but restricted to the most important or first named contributors.
1c) Publishers or printers with all alterations in the sequence: place, publishing house, year or place, year and printer.
2) Details of collection with preceding class-mark. When two year’s figures are adjacent the first applies to the volume and the second to the year of publication. In the case of current journals the last complete year will always be called the last volume. With journals received on subscription, “ff” indicates that the subscription is current. The library is of course, also constantly seeking to supply other current periodicals. The details given apply to the collection as at January 1974.
3) Further details include method of publication, index, tables of contents and music supplements, as well as references to pertinent specialist bibliographies. No details regarding the method of publication were given if this was apparent from the wording of the title.
4) Itemisation of supplements and regular appendices: Individual supplementary publications are not mentioned as this would be outside the scope of the catalogue. Furthermore, the individual supplements are frequently removed from the journal and incorporated into the collection as individual publications.
5) References to preceding and subsequent journals.

The details as a whole refer only to the volumes which are actually in stock. Additions from other sources are in square brackets. The origins of individual details from other sources, taken from the title page, main or cover titles and from the imprint are generally not given or identified. (Curved) brackets are used to denote parentheses which appeared in the original documents.

Titles are reproduced in the style of the original. However, modern orthography was used for the alphabetical ordering of titles and the part of the title used for classification is given in modern spelling before the title in its original style in square brackets (e.g. “Zentralblatt” for “Centralblatt”, “musikalisch” for “musicalisch”). There is an implicit acceptance of the use of separate letters for vowel modification (e.g. ä = ae). As a rule each periodical is referred to under the title of the first volume published, even if a copy of this itself is not held. Only in isolated cases are there deviations from this practice when the generally better known title has been used for the purpose of classification (e.g. “Neue Zeitschrift für Musik” for “Neue Leipziger Zeitschrift für Musik”). No reference is made to any other titles. The main entries in respect of supplements and regular appendices are listed under the main journal. Reference is also made to the titles of supplements, appendices and music appendices.The periodicals are numbered consecutively.The references and indexes refer to these numbers.

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