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The largest music library affiliated with any college or university in North America
3 floors dedicated entirely to music.
A 12th century collection of early medieval theoretical music treatises, written in Germany or Austria. It was previously owned by the Benedictine Admont Abbey, near Salzburg, and was purchased by the Sibley Music Library in 1936. The last page of the manuscript features an exquisite Guidonian hand, devised by theorist Guido d’Arezzo to propagate a method of sight-singing with the six syllables ut, re, mi, fa, sol, and la.
Admont-Rochester Codex
Manuscript (ca. 1103)
This magnificent manuscript is the Sibley Music Library’s single most celebrated holding, and one of only three extant manuscript sources of this celebrated composition (1905). This is a particelle, or short score — a detailed sketch or draft, in condensed form. The composer’s painstakingly fine penmanship, and the multiplicity of colored pencils, never fail to draw admiring comment.
Claude Debussy,
1862-1918
Manuscript (1905)
La Mer: Trois esquisses symphoniques pour orchestre
The holograph manuscript score of Hanson’s most famous composition. Serge Koussevitzky commissioned the work for the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1930; the New York Philharmonic premiere was conducted by Arturo Toscanini, whose markings appear on the score.
Howard Hanson,
1896-1981
Begun April, 1928 – Completed July 6, 1930
Symphony no. 2, opus 30, “Romantic” This copy, number 227 of the limited first edition of the piano vocal score, was signed by the composer, the librettist (DuBose Heyward), the lyricist (Ira Gershwin), and the producer (Rouben Mamoulian) of the first production (1934). From 1923 to 1926, Mamoulian was Assistant Director of Eastman’s Opera Department and Director of the Department of Dramatic Action
and Dance.
George Gershwin,
1898-1937 (New York Random House, 1935) Porgy and Bess A rare, incomplete set of the partbooks of the Masses of Josquin des Prez — the Superius and the Bassus from the liber primus, liber secundus, and liber tertius. The Sibley partbooks are believed to date from a 1514-16 printing by Ottaviano dei Petrucci (1466-1539), the first to print polyphonic music from movable type, which initiated the dissemination of polyphonic music.
Josquin des Prez, d. 1521
Printed at Fossombrone, Italy (1514-16)
by Ottaviano dei Petrucci
Missarum Josquin liber primus;
liber secundus; liber tertius
This archive preserves not only Arthur Farwell’s music manuscripts but also his work as a music publisher, critic, lecturer and writer, artist, and philosopher.
