bavarikon4UThe Counts of Toerring-Jettenbach`s music collection
One of the most important noble families from Bavarian high nobility is the Toerring family, which has been documented since the 12th century. The Counts of Toerring-Jettenbach's music collection comprises 79 music manuscripts and 25 music prints from the period 1591 to 1820. It was catalogued in 1988 for the "Kataloge bayerischer Musiksammlungen" catalogue series at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB) and has since been deposited in its music department.
The collection contains valuable evidence of the cultivation of music at the electoral and royal courts in Munich. The most important part are manuscripts and prints from the possession of Joseph Clemens of Cologne (1671-1723), the younger brother of the Bavarian Elector Max Emanuel (1662-1726). Joseph Clemens was musically highly educated and closely associated with Munich's courtly musical life. He worked as Prince-Bishop of Freising, Bishop of Regensburg and Elector of Cologne, among others, and hired his own court musicians at times. He owned numerous scores of stage works which had been performed in Munich and elsewhere shortly before 1690, among them works by G.A. Bernabei, Steffani, Pollarolo and Ziani. There was also an exchange of musical sources between Elector Max Emanuel and his brother Joseph Clemens. Despite their reference to Munich, some opera scores are not documented in the BSB collection itself but only in the Toerring-Jettenbach collection. Handwritten sources on several stage works by Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), which are of outstanding importance for the tradition of Lully's work, have been preserved from the period of Joseph Clemens' exile during the War of the Spanish Succession.
Important musical manuscripts from the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the Counts of Toerring-Jettenbach collection were written by Imperial Count Clemens Anton of Toerring-Seefeld (1758-1837), who was vice court music director and then court music director in Munich between 1785 and 1819. This part of the collection contains instrumental music, including four symphonies by Cannabich, string chamber music, dance cycles, as well as operas and melodramas by Florian Deller, Franz Anton Dimler, Georg Benda and Peter von Winter and ballet music.
Other manuscripts come from the court of the Elector of the Palatinate and Duke of Palatinate-Neuburg, Johann Wilhelm (1658-1716), as well as from the Counts of Toerring's family themselves. Two German organ tablatures with 120 and 35 inavoliations from the years 1590 and 1588/89 respectively are of outstanding importance from the latter collection.
>> This collection is deposited at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library).
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