Klosterneuburger Librettodrucke aus dem 18. Jahrhundert – neu bewertet

Abstract

The music collections of the monasteries and convents in Central Europe contains many interesting sources. To date, they have been only partially accessed and catalogued. Furthermore, not only the music itself has to be considered, but also various other types of sources such as librettos, periochæ, inventories, invoices, requests, diaries, correspondence etc. These sources need to be described and evaluated in a detailed manner, and only on this basis may questions about the interweaving of repertoire or personnel between the different monasteries – both in the field of liturgical and secular music – arise. The aim of this paper is to take a closer look at a valuable source material, namely the libretti preserved in Klosterneuburg Abbey. The Klosterneuburg libretto collection currently contains a total of 77 exemplars in three different groups. The oldest prints date from the last decade of the 17th century to the most recent from 1765. The largest proportion is made up of the Lenten oratorios and those oratorios performed at the Holy Sepulchre during Holy Week (46 pieces). The second group represents a series of oratorios in honour of St. John of Nepomuk (14 pieces), and the last comprises various homage and occasional works (17 pieces). This paper follows on from the essay by Otto G. Schindler, who did the fundamental cataloguing of the libretti in the library of the Augustinian canons' monastery of Klosterneuburg in the second half of the 20th century. This text attempts to classify the librettos of the Abbey library according to the current state of research and to present some interesting examples.