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ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: E-57

Last update of repository: 15 March 2020

Rossiiskii institut istorii iskusstv (RIII)


Kabinet rukopisei
[Cabinet of Manuscripts]

Telephone: +7 812 315-45-49

Website: http://artcenter.ru/structure/kabinet...

Opening hours: MWF 11:00–17:00

Head: Galina Viktorovna Kopytova (tel. +7 812 315-45-49)


Holdings

Total: 133 fonds; ca. 52,000 units; 11th c.–1991
personal papers—130 fonds (1705–1985); music scores (16th c.–1968); parchment music scores (11th–16th cc.)

The Cabinet of Manuscripts (formerly the Cabinet of Archival Fonds, and earlier the Historiographical Cabinet), administratively part of the Sector on Source Study (Sektor istochnikovedeniia), has developed on the basis of collections of documentary materials from a series of private collections and institutional archives, which earlier comprised structural divisions of RIII and its predecessor institutions, including those from several earlier museums of music, those related to the collections of musical instruments, and most particularly, those that came from the Historiographical Cabinet of LGITMiK. The collections are particularly strong in materials relating to the history of music, theater, dramatic arts, ballet, and cinematography in Russia and abroad. Manuscript and rare published music scores and documentation relating to music are among the most significant in the collections. These include materials from the collection of the Empress Elizabeth (Elizaveta Alekseevna, wife of Alexander I) (1779–1826), from the archives of the Court Capella and the Court Orchestra, from high gentry families, and the personal archives of composers.
        There are unique Western European music scores with neumatic notation on parchment and paper dating from the eleventh through the sixteenth centuries. There are early Russian manuscripts of choral music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in so-called hooked and ordinary staved notation, some of them illuminated. The collection of manuscripts from the library of the Empress Elizabeth also includes music scores of Russian and Italian composers and scores for ensembles. There are autograph music scores of D.S. Bortnians'kyi (Rus. Bortnianskii), Giuseppe Sarti, and Gioacchino Rossini.
        Within the “Collection of Materials for the History of Music Organizations,” there is documentation from many different sources. Documents regarding the Court Capella contain materials recording its activities, organization, the conduct of music classes and schools, and on church choirs; there are documents from the Court Orchestra, the Russian Music Society,and the A.D. Sheremetev Music History Society. There is documentation from the Sector of Musical Culture and Technology of the Hermitage, the Museum of Music on the premises of the Hermitage Theater, and the Leningrad Division of the Union of Soviet Composers, among others. Materials relating to military music are found in the fond of the Military Marching Chancellery, where there are orders and regulations on the implementation of musical signals, marches, etc. And there are many archives of various other musical institutions, organizations, societies, and groups of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
        Among the most valuable materials of personal provenance, that document nineteenth- and early twenteenth-century Russian music, are the extensive fonds of the composers—A.P. Borodin, P.I. Tchaikovsky (Chaikovskii), M.I. Glinka, N.A. Rimskii-Korsakov, and A.G. Rubinstein (Rubinshtein). There are also papers of other composers, directors and music critics such as A.K. Glazunov, V.G. Karatygin, E.F. Napravnik, D.D. Shostakovich, and A.I. Ziloti, among others.
        The collection “Letters and Autographs of Russian Musicians” has a wide variety of documents of R.M. Glier, V.F. Odoevskii, S.S. Prokof'ev, S.V. Rakhmaninov, A.N. Scriabin (Skriabin), and other musicians. Analogous in composition is a collection of autographs of Western European musicians, including albums, scores, letters, and other manuscript materials of Hector Berlioz, Luigi Cherubini, Franz Liszt, Gustav Mahler, Camille (Charles) Saint-Saëns, Johann Strauss, Giuseppe Verdi, and Pauline Viardo, among others.
        Materials for the history of the dramatic theater are represented by the fonds of the director’s office of the Moscow and later St. Petersburg imperial theaters, V.P. Pogozhev, the dramaturgist N.N. Evreinov, the actors and directors P.A. Aidarov, P.P. Gaideburov, E.D. Golovinskaia, V.E. Meyerhold (Meierkhol'd), and the theater specialist A.A. Gvozdev. For the history of ballet, materials are to be found among the papers of the mining engineer N.A. Kondrat'ev; for Jewish musical folklore, there is the fond of the musicologist M.Ia. Beregovskii. The collection “Russian Dramatic Theater” contains the author’s corrections for “The Cherry Orchard” of A.P. Chekhov, with the director’s notations of V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko. There is a collection of programs and posters from St. Petersburg theater productions, solo performances, and concerts (1834–1916).
        Thefond of iconography contains photographs, drawings, and printed graphics with individual and group portraits of musicians and theater artists (some with autographs), and views of various places associated with their life and activities. The separate V.S. Gil' collection includes music scores and particularly extensive pictorial materials on the history of Russian and Soviet ballet. Among works of masters of theater decorative art is worth mentioning the sketches by Alfred Roller for the opera “Ruslan and Liudmila” of M.I. Glinka.


Working conditions:
Researchers are received in the working room of the Cabinet of Manuscripts, since there is no formal reading room. Materials are delivered soon after orders are placed.

Reference facilities:
There are 140 inventory opisi. There are catalogues of iconographic materials, of music scores, and individuals listed by name. There is a special card catalogue, “Biobibliographic Dictionary of Musicians,” based on questionnaires with information on dramatic actors, singers, dancers, directors, theater artists, and directors, which was established mainly on the basis of documentation in the records of the Directorate of Imperial Theaters in RGIA.
        Unpublished reference surveys include the work of M.P. Troianskii, “Daily Repertory of the Russian Theater in St. Petersburg, 1757–1832,” O.L. Dansker, “Concert Repertory in St. Petersburg, 1821–1858” (on the basis of posters retained in RGIA), V.E. Vatsuro, “Catalogue of Thearter Art and Stage Designs (late 18th c.–1950s) on the Basis of Materials in Leningrad Museums,” and P.M. Klinchin, “Russian Provincial Theater, 1790–1900.”

Copy facilities:
Xerox and photographic copies can be prepared.


ABB ArcheoBiblioBase Archeo Biblio Base Patricia Kennedy Grimsted