The Morgan houses one of the world’s finest collections of music manuscripts and rare printed scores. In addition to numerous musicians’ letters and first editions of scores and librettos, the holdings include one of the the largest collections of Mahler manuscripts anywhere and substantial holdings of Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, Ravel, and Schoenberg. Forty thousand collection items span six centuries and many countries. The Morgan’s materials relating to the lives and works of the dramatist William S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur S. Sullivan form the most extensive archive of its kind. Significant music collections at the Morgan include the Mary Flagler Cary Collection, the James Fuld Collection, and the Robert Owen Lehman Collection on deposit.
Although Pierpont Morgan is not on record as evincing any notable interest in music, he did make two important purchases: the two earliest dated letters of the thirteen-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the manuscript of Ludwig van Beethoven's Violin Sonata no. 10, op. 96, in G Major.
The Morgan's music collection is the result of the generosity of several donors and lenders. In 1962 the Dannie and Hettie Heineman Collection, a small but exceedingly well-chosen selection of music manuscripts, was placed on deposit and then formally given to the Morgan in 1977. In 1968 the institution became a major repository of music manuscripts with the donation of Mary Flagler Cary's extraordinary collection of manuscripts, letters, and printed scores. In 1972 Robert Owen Lehman put on deposit his collection of manuscript scores, the greatest private collection of its kind. In 2008 the Morgan acquired the James Fuld Collection, by all accounts the finest private collection of printed music in the world.
Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.
Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.
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Music Manuscripts & Printed Music
Hensel, Fanny Mendelssohn, 1805-1847, composer.
Ostersonate : autograph manuscript
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 1756-1791.
Earliest compositions, K. 1a-1d : manuscript in the hand of Leopold Mozart, 1761.
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 1756-1791.
Piano concerto no. 21 in C major, K. 467 : autograph manuscript, 1785 Mar. 9?
[Playbill of the first Leipzig performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni by the Guardasonische Gesellschaft, June 15, 1788].
Chopin, Frédéric, 1810-1849.
Etude for piano, op. 10, no. 7, in C major : autograph manuscript, 1832.