Kennen Sie schon … die Austen Family Music Books?

Copy of sec­tion of ‚Deck the Halls‘ score in Jane Austen’s hand.
© Jane Austen’s House Muse­um

Jane Austen arbeit­ete nicht nur als Autorin, sie spielte auch Klavier und sang – und sie sam­melte Noten.
Die Hart­ley Library der Uni­ver­si­ty of Southamp­ton hat vor eini­gen Jahren die Alben, die sich Austen im Laufe der Jahre zusam­mengestellt hat, dig­i­tal­isiert: „The Austen Fam­i­ly Music Books“.

This col­lec­tion con­sists of eigh­teen print­ed and man­u­script music books owned by mem­bers of the Austen fam­i­ly, includ­ing the writer Jane Austen, in the eigh­teenth and ear­ly nine­teenth cen­turies. Many are binder’s vol­umes, com­piled from sep­a­rate man­u­script or print­ed sheet music items bound togeth­er for an indi­vid­ual user. Oth­ers are per­son­al man­u­script albums made whol­ly or prin­ci­pal­ly by a sin­gle copy­ist. Although some vol­umes were com­piled as ear­ly as the 1750s, the major­i­ty date from Jane Austen’s life­time (1775–1817). Austen made or used sev­er­al of the books, and she was prob­a­bly famil­iar with music col­lect­ed by oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers.

The col­lec­tion brings togeth­er near­ly 600 pieces, main­ly songs and works for key­board or harp, by both inter­na­tion­al fig­ures and British com­posers. The books present a vivid pic­ture of domes­tic musi­cal cul­ture in Eng­land in the years around 1800, fur­nish­ing valu­able insights on music mak­ing in the homes of gen­try fam­i­lies as well as essen­tial con­tex­tu­al­i­sa­tion for musi­cal episodes in Austen’s fic­tion.

https://archive.org/details/austenfamilymusicbooks

Weit­ere Infor­ma­tio­nen zum Dig­i­tal­isierung­spro­jekt gibt es z.B. in dieser Mel­dung der Uni Southamp­ton oder in diesem Open-Cul­ture-Blog­post.