The Department of Musicology of the Institute of Art History and Musicology houses a collection of about 20,000 items, including manuscripts, printed music, rare books, letters, and other documents. Together, they offer a vivid picture of the musical life and history of the Mainz region and provide rich material for research into both their content and provenance.
The musicological collections trace their origins to Adam Bernhard Gottron (1889–1971), Mainz prelate and founder of the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Mittelrheinische Musikgeschichte e.V.”. After his appointment as honorary professor in 1959, Gottron made the study of regional music history the central focus of the Institute of Musicology—a tradition that continues to this day.
Part of his written legacies were donated to the institute and are preserved today as the “Gottron Collection”. It includes a number of rare and uniquely preserved music manuscripts and prints, numerous transcriptions and excerpts prepared for scholarly work, as well as several complete collections he acquired, among them the partial estate of Franz Willms (1893–1946).
Over the years, the Department of Musicology’s collections have grown through generous donations and bequests, among them the estates of Josef Knettel (1875–1975) and Arno Lemke (1916–1988). The largest part of the collection is the archive of the “Mainzer Liedertafel and Damengesangsverein” choir association with largely complete performance materials as well as files and documents from 1831-1969.
Contact
No acquisitions are made to expand the collection. However, donations from private individuals and institutions are accepted.
The collections are primarily open to scholars researching (regional) music history. Individual objects and sub-collections have regularly been used in courses and student projects—for example, in 2013/2014 as part of the teaching project ELaM–Editionslabor Musikwissenschaft.
From the Collection
