Archival documents contain accurate and detailed information relevant to many aspects of musical scholarship: to biography, chronology, history of institutions and societies, the place and function of musicians in society, performing practice (in the fullest sense of that phrase) and many others. They yield the kind of information that primarily musical manuscripts and printed sources cannot provide.
The term ‘archive’ is here used as defined under §1 below. It is also widely used in a second sense, to denote what bibliographers would classify as a ‘collection’ or even ‘library’: the Deutsches Musikgeschichtliches Archiv in Kassel, for example, is a library of photographic materials relating to sources of German music. Many collections fall halfway between an archive in the strict sense, consisting of the surviving papers of a historical person, and a collection, which may include material added by subsequent collectors. Such a case is the collection in the Library of Congress known as the ‘Rachmaninoff Archives’. See also Libraries; Collections, private; and Sound archives.
4. Application to music history.
FRANÇOIS LESURE, ROGER BOWERS/BARBARA H. HAGGH (with ANDRÉ VANRIE)
Archives are the totality of documents produced or received by a person or an organization in the course of administrative activity and the transaction of affairs. Most archives are now kept as an organized body of records in an authorized repository and are maintained in their original chronological order. Both the source of the documents and their method of classification thus differ from those of an ordinary collection or group of manuscripts in a library, where the documents are normally classified by other criteria, such as date of acquisition, subject or original bibliographic order.
Archive collections differ greatly according to their institution of origin. Public archives are produced by the many and various organs of government, including both national and local government, the legislature and the judiciary. They comprise archives of national scope, including the records of all central government departments, of parliament and of the higher courts of law, as well as archives of local governmental and judicial activity, at provincial, county and municipal level. Private archives arise from the activity of private businesses and organizations, institutions both ecclesiastical and lay, and individuals. They include the archives of all religious institutions, especially those of parish, collegiate, cathedral and monastic churches; the records of notarial and business organizations of all kinds; and archives accumulated by individuals, especially by landowners in the creation and administration of extensive households and landed estates. In free societies the principle that public archives should be accessible to the public is generally accepted. Private archives remain the property of their owners, and special permission must be sought before they can be consulted.
Since the late 18th century it has become acknowledged that the state is responsible for the preservation of its documentary heritage, and throughout Europe public archives are readily accessible in record offices maintained by the state. In general a central repository is provided for central government archives, and in the larger countries there are also provincial repositories. Since this movement began, with the establishment of the French Archives Nationales in 1789 and Archives Départementales in 1796, efforts have been made in every country to centralize dispersed materials and create a unified administration for national and local archives. A comprehensive annotated list of the major archives of the world prepared by the International Council on Archives is found in the International Directory of Archives (1992).
In western Europe there exist the following national public archives: the Staatsarchiv in Vienna; the Archives Générales du Royaume in Brussels; the Public Record Office in London; the Archives Nationales in Paris; the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz; the Archivio Centrale dello Stato in Rome; the Algemeen Rijksarchief in The Hague; the Archivo Histórico Nacional in Madrid; and the Bundesarchiv in Berne. Then come the archives of the counties in Britain; of the provinces in Austria, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands; of the départements in France; of the Länder in Germany; and of the cantons in Switzerland. Next come the district, municipal, episcopal and parish archives in these countries. An exception are the archives of the Vatican, which are extraordinarily rich in history for almost every country, and which have a distinct and unique organization.
In the USA, because of its federal constitution, there are two levels of governmental administration and legal process. The federal archives are held in Washington DC by the National Archives and Records Services, a unit of the General Services Administration, or (in the case of material primarily of regional interest) in regional branch archives; state and municipal archives are held locally.
Obviously each national archive collection reflects the history of its country of origin. Where the state has been relatively recently centralized, as in Italy, it is necessary to search the archives of all the provinces that made up the nation as well as the more recently established central archive in Rome; but where centralization came early, as in England and France, the archives have been grouped together in the capital from an early date. In many countries, administration of both national and local archives has been vexed by changes in national boundaries, particularly in Germany where a regrouping of the archives was begun in 1815. A national Reichsarchiv was established in Potsdam in 1919, but the partition of Germany in 1945–9 resulted in its division into an archive for the Federal Republic in Koblenz and another in Potsdam for the Democratic Republic. Since the reunification of Germany the archive in Koblenz serves the entire country, and that of the former Democratic Republic is now under its direction. As a result of transfers of territory, there have been several exchanges of archive collections between nations; for example, in 1861 France gave Italy the Piedmont archives, and in return received from Italy those of Savoy.
Archive centralization has not always happened, however. Archival material relating to certain provinces of northern Italy remains in Austria, for instance; indeed, it was only by virtue of a special clause in the Treaty of Versailles (1919) that the volumes of 15th-century music known as the Trent Codices were transferred to Italy at the same time as the city of Trent was ceded by Austria. Further, many archives have been destroyed, such as those of the city of Paris in 1870, and of the state of Naples in 1943. The archives of the Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland) were severely damaged by fire in 1922, and those of the city of Florence by flood in 1966.
European countries show great differences in the way they maintain certain classes of archive. In France, for example, ecclesiastical archives, of special value for the history of sacred music, have been kept in the public repositories since the Revolution and its attendant separation of church from state. In other Western countries, especially in Italy and Spain, they remain at their institution of origin. Similarly, it is usual in France and Italy for notaries’ archives to be kept in official vaults, whereas elsewhere they remain in their place of origin.
Records of birth, death and marriage are of great importance in biographical work. For many centuries such records were produced and retained by the church, but in some countries a system of civil registration was introduced. Such registration began in England, for example, in 1837, and since 1858 all wills (previously proved in the church courts) have been proved in civil probate courts. As a result, the scholar can consult one central repository (the Public Record Office, Kew) for such information since those dates. Where earlier records survive they can often be found in local archival repositories such as county record offices. Many countries have taken population censuses since the methods of demography became known in the 19th century; the results, with a wealth of personal information, are often available for consultation, as are registers of electors. The largest repository of genealogical records, however, is the Family History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Salt Lake City, where millions of microfilms of American and European parish archives are kept. Copies can be consulted there and at regional Family History Centers.
Since respect for historical material is relatively recent, there are numerous exceptions in the distinction between libraries and archive repositories. Occasionally, for example, whole music manuscripts are found in archive collections, not to mention the many fragments discovered bound in as flyleaves to non-musical volumes. A few examples may be cited: there is a music manuscript dating from the end of the 15th century in the archives of the city of Heilbronn; an entire collection of printed 18th-century music in the departmental archives of Agen; and censored or forbidden operas and songs in the national archives of France. Conversely, many libraries hold important archival material. A whole series of account books of the French royal household, originating in dispersed collections and important for music history, is in the manuscript department of the Bibliothèque Nationale, as well as in stray ecclesiastical archives (notably the chapter registers of Parisian churches) and among the considerable quantity of scattered pieces gathered by private collectors and genealogists. Archives of defunct organizations may surface in a variety of places; in Britain, for instance, extensive archive collections of extinct landed families and of religious houses dissolved in the 16th century are in the Public Record Office and the manuscript department of the British Library.
In western Europe general appreciation of the importance of preserving archival records, for purely practical legal and administrative purposes, is of long standing; their use by historians, however, is much more recent. During the 19th century the study and writing of history ceased to be merely a branch of literature and evolved into an exact science with techniques for seeking accurate information. By supplying a wholly untapped reserve of data that appeared to be completely free of bias and subjective distortion, archives began to be appreciated as an important source of historical information. Before long, historians of the arts discovered that archival research could do much to illuminate the history of architecture, of painting, of the theatre, and in due course also of music.
Even before the centralization of national archives was far advanced, national series began to be published containing editions of important chronicles (the Monumenta Germaniae Historica for Germany, The Rolls Series for England); and from the mid-19th century several countries issued transcripts and calendars of archival documents together with lists, indexes and catalogues. Local and regional history societies began similar publications, as did private organizations and societies. There is now a massive literature, diffuse and highly complex yet immensely rich. (See also Musicology, §II, 4.)
Archival research can be profitable in many ways to a musicologist. It can produce biographical material about a composer or performer; the date of composition of a particular piece; references to lost music or music manuscripts; the history of a musical institution (royal chapel, church school, liturgical choir, orchestra, conservatory); the music history of a town, a concert society or a lyric theatre; insight into the practices of instrument making and music publishing. In fact, it can produce information relating to all the external aspects of music-making. In broader terms, it can give insight into the place of the musician in society in past ages, and into the place of music among the aesthetic values of the time. Further, archival sources can be of use in the reconstruction of performing practice in music of the pre-Classical era. In the case of sacred music for choir, details of performing method can best be obtained from the archives of the churches maintaining the choirs. The most valuable sources are codes of statutes; accounts and hall books; registers and volumes of chapter decisions; obituaries and cartularies; indentures of choirmasters, singers and organists; inventories of music books; and visitation records. From these it is possible to reconstruct certain features of performance, such as the number of singers, the number of voices to a part, the deployment of solo voices and chorus, the availability and participation of instruments, and by inference even such matters as approximate pitch of performance. Similarly the archives of royal and aristocratic households frequently reveal the exact composition of bands of household musicians and minstrels, and list the instruments available to them.
European scholars first felt the need to use the contents of archives during the 19th century. Italy (Baini, Caffi, Bertolotti, Valdrighi, Radiciotti, Solerti), France (La Fage, Campardon, Jullien), England (Lafontaine), Ireland (Flood) and Germany (Haberl) were the first countries to show an example. These pioneers were often amateurs, spurred on by the growth of learned societies. Succeeding generations were more predominantly made up of professional musicologists (such as La Laurencie, Ecorcheville, Michel Brenet, Prunières) and organ specialists (Dufourcq and many others), of whom the latter were the most active. However, few were willing to publish coherent and complete editions of the texts, with the intention of providing a base for future research. Exceptions were the Note d’archivio by Casimiri, the records of the Confraternity of Our Lady of ’s-Hertogenbosch published by Smijers, and more recently the ‘documentary biographies’ of Schubert, Handel and Mozart by Deutsch. There remains a vast amount of editing (of accounts, archives of churches, chapels and schools, diplomatic correspondence, theatre archives and particularly notaries’ archives), for which the musicologist will have to acquire the skills of the administrative historian.
Archival research can add a new dimension to the study of certain aspects of musical history; but to be successful the researcher must have mastered a number of skills not normally related to serious musical study. It is essential to be acquainted with the rigorous standards of scholarship set by professional historians for the acquisition, collation, evaluation and interpretation of archival information. A sound knowledge of palaeography (the decipherment of handwriting and of abbreviations) and diplomatic (the study of the forms of documents) is no less essential. Awareness of onomastics (the study of proper names), of toponymy (the study of place names) and the history of economics and of the calendar can also prevent erroneous interpretation. The techniques of full diplomatic transcription (making clear exactly what is in the original document and what has been supplied by the transcriber), of calendaring (producing a summary of the essential information-giving section of a document) and abstracting (taking and tabulating the vital facts from a document, particularly a will) are essential. For this the scholar needs to understand how, administratively, the document concerned was produced. Existing guides and inventories, printed and handwritten, should be consulted and the wide range of categories of archival material that may be relevant to his or her inquiry borne in mind. Thus royal household accounts may have to be consulted for a musician’s career in courtly circles, university archives for his years of study, judicial archives in the case of a lawsuit, notary’s and civil records for his private and family life, diplomatic correspondence for his journeys abroad, parish archives for references to his participation in some local event, his marriage and his death, possibly police records, copyright records for publication dates, and so on. For modern times, private archives still in the possession of those who produced them are sources that must not be overlooked, and that usually have no inventory; these include, for instance, the archives of music and record publishers, radio stations, music schools and others.
R. Benton: Directory of Music Research Libraries (Kassel, 1967)
L. Boyle: A Survey of the Vatican Archives and of its Medieval Holdings (Toronto, 1972)
F. Lesure: ‘Archival Research: Necessity and Opportunity’, Perspectives in Musicology, ed. B.S. Brook, E.O.D. Downes and S. Van Solkema (New York, 1972), 56–79
A. Leverett: A Paleographical and Repertorial Study of the MS Trento, Castello del Buonconsiglio 91 (1378) (diss., Princeton U., 1990), chap.1
M. Vázquez de Parga with others: International Bibliography of Directories and Guides to Archival Repositories/Bibliographie internationale des guides et annuaires relatifs aux dépôts d’archives (Munich, 1990)
International Directory of Archives/Annuaire international des archives, Archivum, xxxviii (1992)
A. Wathey: ‘Musicology, Archives and Historiography’, Musicology and Archival Research: Brussels 1993, 1–26
G. Moroni, ed.: La musica negli archivi e nelle biblioteche delle Marche (Fiesole, 1996)
V. Duckles and I. Reed: Music Reference and Research Materials: an Annotated Bibliography (New York, 5/1997), 391–496
F. Blouin, ed.: Vatican Archives: an Inventory and Guide to Historical Documents of the Holy See (New York, 1998)
Basic Archival Problems: Strategies for Development Archivum, xliv (1999)
Archivum (Munich, 1951–) [pubn of the International Council on Archives]
Annual Report (London, 1953–) [IAML, UK branch]
Janus (Paris, 1985–) [pubn of the International Council on Archives]