Paul Hirsch Music Collection at the British Library is rich in early examples of music printing, decorated editions and fine engraving. Documents in The Paul Hirsch Papers also detail Hirsch’s music library and his collecting practices.
05 Mar 2025Blog series Music
The Paul Hirsch Music Collection at the British Library is one of the most outstanding discrete collections of printed music held within the Library. It is accompanied by the Paul Hirsch Papers, which include archival papers and documents relating to Hirsch’s music library and his collecting practices.
Paul Hirsch, the son of a German-Jewish industrialist, was born in Frankfurt on 24 February 1881. He first began collecting music with his acquisition in 1897 of a Peters Edition copy of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion which would become the foundation purchase of a collection that would in time encompass over 18,000 items.
Paul Hirsch was also an accomplished musician (he played the violin and viola to a high standard), and an exceptionally cultivated man, who fully understood the needs of both the performer and the musicologist. In collecting, he was guided by principles of scholarly importance, the physical condition and preservation of the items, their rarity, typography, binding, and any special features such as illustration. In the early years of this collection, Hirsch’s acquisitions were dominated by editions of, and scholarly works relating to, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of Hirsch’s favourite composers. Hirsch went to great lengths to assemble a vast collection of first and early editions in 1906, and was able to publish his own catalogue of Mozart items, the Katalog einer Mozart-Bibliothek.
Paul Hirsch, Katalog einer Mozart-Bibliothek. Frankfurt 1906. British Library Hirsch 442
Later, Beethoven and Schubert would be represented in almost equal strength and the library would hold a copy of almost every major opera published in full score. Paul Hirsch published a four-volume catalogue to his own collection, detailing the four main areas of the collection: theoretical works; opera; miscellaneous; and early editions of Mozart along with first editions of Beethoven and Schubert. Items included in his collection can be searched on our library catalogue.
From 1919 onwards, Hirsch’s Music Library in the Neue Mainzerstraße was open to the public for two afternoons per week, with Dr. Kathi Meyer as its librarian, whom Hirsch had appointed. Internationally, the collection was recognised as being an outstanding one, with many famous visitors throughout the musical world flocking to the library. Over the years, his visitors’ ledgers record such famous clientele as Alfred Einstein, cousin of Albert Einstein. On a warm and sunny October afternoon in 1920, Hirsch held an open day for visitors, complete with some of the rarest items, hand-picked, on display, and a small catalogue to describe them. One of the guests, Ludwig Sternaux, described the collection with admiration as the greatest private library he knew, located within one of the best parts of Frankfurt.
However, due to the changing political circumstances in Germany, it increasingly became more and more difficult for Hirsch to maintain his passion as a collector, having maintained contacts with booksellers all over Europe via his correspondence and regular travels. His correspondence after 1933 reflects the pressures to which Hirsch found himself exposed, due to the regulations which the Nazi authorities were imposing upon those wanting to obtain foreign currencies and purchases. More acutely, Hirsch, as a Jewish citizen in Germany, must have felt his business, and indeed his and his family’s lives to be under threat. His skills as a collector become even more remarkable when the enthusiasm he maintained amid the political events of those times is considered.
Hirsch fled Nazi Germany in 1936 and settled in Cambridge. In 1946, he sold his collection to the British Museum – later British Library – after it had previously been housed within Cambridge University Library for a short period. Paul Hirsch died in Cambridge on 23 November 1951, having secured for the British Library one of its finest ever acquisitions.
The Paul Hirsch Papers at the British Library provide detailed records of how carefully and systematically Paul Hirsch went about building his library. All genres and all periods of European classical music are represented in his collection. It was his practice sometimes to buy inexpensive, imperfect copies of an item, and to exchange them for better copies at a later stage, if the opportunity arose. As Hirsch himself put it:
‘I do not regret a single one of my purchases, although I know I sometimes paid too much. What I do regret are the things I refused to buy, for many of them I have not seen again and some I despair ever to see again’.
The Paul Hirsch Papers include correspondence from bookdealers in major cities such as London, Paris, and Berlin, with whom Hirsch was in regular contact in the 1920s and ‘30s in Germany, as well as from the period following his move to England. You can find out more about the Paul Hirsch Papers in this blog.
Not only was Paul Hirsch a collector of music, but he was also a gifted performer. He played the violin and viola, as a talented amateur, giving chamber music concerts at his own home in Frankfurt on a monthly basis. The Paul Hirsch Papers include concert programmes from concerts given in his house at 29 Neue Mainzerstraße. Hirsch played first violin in his own string quartet and quintet.
Among the many hundred theoretical works collected by Hirsch are several by the 15th century Italian theorist Franchinus Gaffurius. The autograph manuscript of Gaffurius’s first important work Theoriae Musicae Tractatus (A treatise on the theory of music), probably dates from 1479. A revised version of the treatise, which was printed in 1480 with the title Theoricum Opus, is also in the Hirsch Collection.
Franchinus Gaffurius: Theoriae Musicae Tractatus. British Library Hirsch IV.1441.
The Hirsch Collection is especially rich in early examples of music printing. Ottaviano Petrucci was among the first to print music from moveable type. In 1498 he was granted a 20-year privilege to print both polyphonic music and chant in the Venetian states; by 1510 he has produced around 40 lavish volumes of sacred and secular music. Among these were five books of motets by the most highly regarded composers of the day, including Josquin, Brumel and Isaac. Hirsch owned a fine copy of the superius part of the third book of motets.
Ottaviano Petrucci's Motetti C. Venice, 1504. British Library Hirsch III.984.
Hirsch was particularly interested in decorated editions and fine engraving. The image shown here is from a description of a court ballet performed in celebration of the marriage of the Duc de Joyeuse in 1581 and includes illustrations of the costumes and sets, as well as the full text, and music for the songs and dances.
Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx, Balet Comique de la Royne. Paris, 1582. British Library Hirsch III.629
The vogue for dancing and singing in the early 18th century led to a huge increase in the publication of popular music. Some was published in unusual forms, for instance on fans or playing cards. Hirsch acquired a rare pack of 52 playing cards dating from around 1725. Each card bears a song for voice and flute. The cards are currently on display in our Treasures Gallery.
Pack of musical playing cards. British Library Hirsch IV.1444
A new AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) PhD Studentship between the British Library and Royal Holloway, University of London will study the Paul Hirsch Music Collection, its rich history and Paul Hirsch's collecting practices. More information about this exciting project and how to apply can be found on the Royal Holloway website.
The deadline for applications is Friday 25 April 2025, 12 noon UK time.
For an overview of the collection, see Alec Hyatt King, ‘Paul Hirsch and his Music Library’, British Library Journal, 7/1 (1981), pp. 1-11
Paul Hirsch and Kathi Meyer-Baer, Katalog der Musikbibliothek Paul Hirsch (vols 1-3, Berlin: M. Breslauer, 1928-1936; vol 4, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947).
This blogs is part of our series exploring the music collections of the British Library, encompassing materials in all formats – manuscript, printed and digital editions, recordings, literature – from all periods.
This blog focuses on updates and events relating to our music manuscripts and archives and our printed music collections, while updates relating to music recordings can be found on in the Sound and Vision series.
