Musings in the Music Library #4 - Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library

Fellow librarian, Daniel Neal
- from the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library in a mail to the SABC Music Library and the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra Library:

"The standard title of where I work is the CPO Library, although this is for convenience.  What was the CTSO collection is owned by the Cape Orchestra Trust, and what was CAPAB’s still belongs to Artscape.  

The CTSO part is one of the oldest collections in South Africa, dating from 1913 the founding year of the Cape Town Municipal Orchestra, whereas CAPAB didn’t start their collection until 1971, when the Artscape building was finished.  But the antiquity of the CTSO collection is not just from purchases beginning from 1913.  

There are many score and parts sets that are much older; undocumented and impossible to ever discover their origins, I just speculate on how they ever got here. Even more, for some repertoire, why:  there are works here that never were popular enough to justify purchase.
 
My favorite to date are the Symphony no. 3 and the Cello Concerto of Joachim Raff, both unopened, unmarked and unplayed sets, first editions dating from around 1875.  

The stories of how and why they got from Berlin to Cape Town are long lost now, but nonetheless intriguing."    

Part of a series of posts.



Related posts:

Musings in the Music Library #1

Musings in the Music Library #2 - Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library

Musings in the Music Library #3 - Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library