Bibliography of Music Theory Pre-1800

Introduction · Author Index

Introduction

Unquestionably the strongest area among the rare holdings in Watanabe Special Collections is music theory printed before 1800. The collection, which begins with Franciscus Niger's Brevis Grammatica (1480), is astonishingly wide and deep. A significant number of the items, however, do not appear in RISM, including Niger's work itself. Thus, the full resources of the collection, though most are available through the on-line catalog, are not drawn into one convenient special reference source. This bibliography is an ongoing project that aims at several goals.

The first objective is the ultimate production of a complete special subject bibliography of Watanabe Special Collection's holdings in pre-1800 music theory. The motivation for this is to provide an easy means of access to scholars pursuing research in the field. Second, the project intends to produce an effective update and correction of the collection's RISM holdings. The third goal is to provide such information as will further and facilitate research in the field. This last goal has defined the nature of the bibliography itself.

The advent of electronic imaging has had a dramatic impact on the use of rare materials. Contrary to early predictions of the obsolescence of rare collections, the exact reverse has proven true. Electronic imaging has so greatly increased scholars' access to items that it has raised scholarship to new levels. The burgeoning of special societies, seminars, courses, interest groups, and programs related to the study of the printed artifacts themselves is evidence of this. The quality of scholarship and the concerns it addresses have risen to a level that makes the evidence of the material item itself invaluable.

This project addresses this need by providing for each item both a traditional bibliographic description and a title page facsimile. However valuable and informative the traditional description may be, only a title page facsimile is capable of answering many of the questions that arise in the course of research.

Progress on the project is by nature slow and is further limited to available resources of time. Bibliographic description requires much time and study, and the amount of time available for such pleasurable work is scarce in an active special collections department with many services to provide. Bear with us as this work in progress grows.

S.M. Honea
Spring 1997