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EXPERIENCING MATERIALS AND KNOWLEDGE: THE DANISH NATIONAL LIBRARY'S MUSICCOLLECTIONAuthor(s): Anne Ørbæk JensenSource: Fontes Artis Musicae, Vol. 58, No. 3, National Libraries (July-September 2011), pp.253-259Published by: International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres(IAML)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23512806 .

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EXPERIENCING MATERIALS AND KNOWLEDGE: THE DANISH NATIONAL LIBRARY'S MUSIC COLLECTION

Anne 0rbaek Jensen1

English Abstract The National Danish Music Collection is part of The Royal Library in Copenhagen, which today serves as both the National Library and Copenhagen University Library. Four main aims of our work can be specified. In the collecting process you have to evaluate legal deposit and especially the

challenges of e-resources. Preserving is very expensive and demands a constant dialogue with

artists, and providing access will also be in a close connection with users in different ways. Finally distributing information demands a choice of media and strategic alliances. Thus cultural exchange and partnership are important areas for the library.

French Abstract

La Collection nationale danoise de musique fait partie de la Bibliothèque royale à Copenhague dans son double rôle de bibliothèque nationale et bibliothèque universitaire de Copenhague. Quatre ob

jectifs principaux caractérisent notre travail. Le processus de collecte nécessite de prendre en

compte les questions de dépôt légal et surtout le défi des ressources électroniques. La conservation

est très coûteuse et exige un dialogue continu avec les artistes, tandis que l'accès aux contenus s'ef

fectue en relation étroite avec les utilisateurs de diverses façons. Enfin, la diffusion de l'information

exige un choix de médias et des alliances stratégiques. C'est pourquoi la bibliothèque se concentre sur les problématiques d'échange culturel et de partenariat.

German Abstract

Die nationale dänische Musiksammlung ist Teil der Königlichen Bibliothek zu Kopenhagen, die heute ihre Rolle sowohl als Nationalbibliothek als auch als Universitätsbibliothek Kopenhagens wa hrnimmt. Vier Flauptaufgaben ihrer Arbeit werden beschrieben: Im Rahmen des Sammelauftrages

muss die Ablieferung von Pflichtexemplaren und dabei die Herausforderung durch elektronische Materialien spezielle Beachtung finden. Besonders kostenintensiv ist die Bestandserhaltung, die außerdem einen dauerhaften Kontakt zu Künstlern erfordert. Für die Zugänglichmachung der Bestände sollten die Nutzerinteressen auf vielfältige Art Berücksichtigung finden. Schließlich er fordert die Verbreitung von Informationen Klarheit darüber, welche Medien und technischen Plattformen einzusetzen sowie welche strategischen Bündnisse dafür dienlich sind. Daher sind kul tureller Austausch und entsprechende Partnerschaften ein besonderer Schwerpunkt der Arbeit in

der Königlichen Bibliothek.

1. Anne 0rbœk Jensen is head of the Department of Music and Theatre at The Royal Library, Copenhagen.

253



254 FONTES ARTIS MUSICAE 58/3

One of the most prominent gems of the Danish National Library's music collection is the

manuscript of Johann Sebastian Bach's cantata Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut, BWV 199

(Illustration l).2 But Bach was surely not a Danish composer, so how can this be? The

manuscript's long history involves a Holstein music collector called Peter Grönland

(1761-1825) who lived in Denmark and donated his collection to The Royal Library (Det

Kongelige Bibliotek).3 The autograph was rediscovered by the German musicologist Werner Wolffheim (1877-1930) who presented it to his fellow scholars in 1911.4 This ex

ample is suggestive of some of the challenges and possibilities surrounding the construc tion of a 'National music collection'.

A Brief Introduction

The National Danish Music Collection is part of The Royal Library in Copenhagen, which

today serves as both the National Library and Copenhagen University Library. The li

brary's core collections originate from the middle of the seventeenth century, but the music collection is younger. A foundation was laid with donations from prominent com

posers and musicians, the most important being the private collection bequeathed to the

library by the Danish composer C. E. F. Weyse (1774-1842). Legal deposit of sheet music was introduced in Denmark in 1902, but, even before that, efforts had already been made to acquire all Danish music prints. Legal deposit in relation to recordings was introduced in 1998 and digital sheet music is collected as part of the act of harvesting the internet

(domain .dk and supplements), following the introduction of deposit legislation covering online sources introduced in 2004.

Today the music collection comprises approximately 300,000 items of sheet music, 27,000 music manuscripts and 60,000 recordings. In addition to legal deposit, the collec tion receives items through gifts and purchases, and a special focus point is manuscripts from contemporary Danish composers. Collections of recordings also exist from before 1998 - among them an extensive variety of jazz records and tapes, both Danish and for

eign. The national collection of recorded music is held by the State and University Library in Aarhus, Jutland. The Royal Library's purpose is to collect, preserve, provide access, and distribute information about the collections to the highest standards, and two of our staff members therefore have the status of researchers, publishing scholarly works about the collections. Our main user groups are scholars, students, musicians and composers, and more generally Danish and international individuals seeking information on special sub

jects or items.

Collecting

I want to focus on the four main aims of our work: collecting, preserving, providing access, and distributing information about the collections. The terms 'national' and 'collection'

correspond nicely with the concepts of time and space separation, disembedding social

systems, and the reflexive modern society discussed by modern sociologists, such as

2. Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, shelfmark C I, 615. Online version: <http://img.kb.dk/ma//bach

/MHOl.pdfx 3. See Erik Dal, 'Peter Grönland. 1761-1825. En Holstensk musikdyrker i Kobenhavn', Fund og Forskning 7

(1960), 100-24.

4. Werner Wolffheim, 'Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut. Eine ungedruckte Solo-Kantate Joh. Seb. Bachs',

Bach-Jahrbuch (1911), 1-22.



THE DANISH NATIONAL LIBRARY'S MUSIC COLLECTION 255

ILLUSTRATION 1 Johann Sebastian Bach, Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut, autograph manu

script. Copenhagen, Royal Library, shelfmark C I, 615. Photo: Karsten Bundgaard, The Royal

Library, Copenhagen

Anthony Giddens.5 Sociologists use the term 'disembedding' to refer to the fact that con

temporary social interactions are no longer necessarily linked to particular places, but can

transcend space and time via the internet and interactive media. These issues are espe

cially interesting and challenging in a digital environment. The library's acquisition policy reflects contemporary constructions of nationhood and national identity at any given time.

Thus the "Danish" national music collection also comprises items from Norway (a Danish

territory until 1814), Schleswig-Holstein (up to 1864) and Iceland (up to 1944). Today, of

course, for the national library we only collect material that we now understand to be

Danish, but historically we can see, for example, that the acquisition of Norwegian mate

rial for the national collection continued even after 1814. "Collection" can also be a difficult term to handle. With the intensified focus on indi

viduals in modern society, more artists - both professional and amateur - naturally con

sider their entire musical output to be interesting and important. Products are easily and cheaply preserved, printed, or copied, and in the future when we are lucky enough to

5. See Anthony Giddens, Sociology, 6th ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2009)




acquire a composer's archive we will probably have to make difficult decisions regarding what should be kept. When you have seven versions of a work stored on a hard disc - will

they be different enough to justify preserving them all? If not - which ones are? We will

be discussing these problems in order to ensure that members of staff collect the right pieces when they are confronted with a collection to be acquired in great haste.

As the most extensive collection of sheet music in Denmark and with an aim also to serve performers, the national collection purchases foreign music to be made available on loan. This is an area where modern society's reflexive character stands out. We still have the foresight to buy a broad and almost representative selection of sheet music, but we

recognize that over time this will be more difficult to sustain. Luckily our collections can be supplemented by other pieces of music on demand or interlibrary loan, or these works will appear on the internet. The inclusion of Danish collections recently in WorldCat helps to put us in relation to the broad international context.6 In a very real sense, the whole world's libraries can be part of our collections and we can be part of theirs.

Legal Deposit

Recent developments in this area make for a good example of the process of disembed

ding social systems. A couple of decades ago the relevant clause in the Legal Deposit Act

specified that music was published (printed), and the person responsible for depositing was the printer. Now this system gradually seems more and more dissolved and everyone can produce fine 'publications' at home. This situation is now reflected in the Act, which states that the person who applies the finishing touch to the production is responsible for the deposit. The material doesn't have to be printed - merely disseminated to a broader circle of people.

This situation, combined with the new material to be collected (e.g. recordings and on line sources) makes the legal deposit area much more complicated than it was some decades ago. For preservation reasons, three physically separate departments are re

sponsible for the national collection of music in Denmark: sheet music in the music de

partment of the Royal Library in Copenhagen; recordings in the State and University Library of Aarhus; and digital music on the internet in the Legal Deposit Department in The Royal Library. There is extensive cooperation between these departments, but it is

remarkable, though not unreasonable to realize that preservation issues guide the flow. On the other hand there is no doubt that we will have to reconsider what it means to distribute and provide access to information. When we move into the popular music

sphere the private collections we acquire will be much more differentiated in terms of material type. Two central issues are at stake here. Many items or collections are in fact combinations of different media - such as sheet music with CDs and sometimes with fur ther material on the Internet. Where do they belong? The other issue relates to The National Union Catalogue of Music in Denmark which could be hard to make complete. What do you include: digitized facsimiles, examples of Danish music published on the Internet outside the .dk domain? And how do you find these digital sources? It is worth

giving a thought in our internationalized world how to provide a National Union Catalogue which includes the relevant material or perhaps to redefine the concept. On the other hand it is important for depositing institutions and publishers to make the music visible in the right catalogues quickly.

6. <http://www.worldcat.org>.




Preserving

The sociological idea of the separation of time and space is especially facilitated by the new

technical possibilities of our age. Many composers today use music notation software to

write their compositions, and the library will in the future be given hard disc drives when

collecting an artist's works. When we receive such a work in digital format, we will try to

preserve it as digital bits as well as in a visual form. The latter especially demands a high

degree of control which is expensive. This gives us a great challenge to prioritize, priori

tize, prioritize ... even though digital media is generally perceived to be cost-effective.

Usually we try to make appointments with composers to secure acquisition of their ma

terial either when they want to deposit it or upon their death. In the future, however, we

foresee the difficulties of reading 20- or 30-year-old files in obsolete formats or using out

dated software. Soon we will have to be in constant dialogue with composers in order to

acquire their works and preserve them in the right way, and this presents a challenge to

staff as well as to composers. We try to get an overview of the different music notation soft

ware, and these are issues that we will no doubt continue to debate in the coming years.

Providing access

The online catalogue, in combination with the reading room, is still our patron's most di

rect form of access to our collections. But again the technological possibilities can make

our collections available 24/7 all over the world, and maybe it will be easier to digitize se

lected material - mostly Danish items - that people order for the reading rooms and ask

them to view the digital version instead of the original. Then they don't have to come to

the library at all, if they are not conducting special studies concerning paper types etc.

This could be a future procedure though also definitely involving some kind of funding. We often digitize works on demand, for example in response to an order for copies of

a particular item, and to date we have digitized about 5,350 music items from our collec

tions. Digitization serves several purposes, helping to promote our collections (especially of Danish music), comply with user needs, and preserve the original artifacts (printed edi

tion, manuscript, or sound carrier) by limiting the need to view them physically. On

demand requests account for about a third to half of this activity overall, but in each case

we consider whether the requested piece matches our profile - with Danish music and

early music especially in focus. Illustration 2, for example, shows the title page of a Lidel

quintet from the Giedde music collection (flute music) which is digitized and freely avail

able from the library's website, ready to print and play.7 We have experienced an almost astronomical increase in demand, so that loans from

our physical collection now play a relatively minor role in the loan statistics. In all cases, our digitization of music is limited to composers who are free of copyright according to

EU law. For the time being, we publish digital facsimiles as PDF files, making it possible to print them and place them on the music stand, but not to transfer them to music nota

tion software. We are, however, involved in ongoing discussions as to whether we as the

National Library and an institution with a focus on copyright and droit morale8 could frame

7. <http://img.kb.dk/ma/giedde/gs05-10bm.pdf> 8. The concept of Droit morale refers to the moral and personal rights that an author or creator has in then

work, regardless of any other rights associated with copyright and publication. Moral rights can only be assigned

to the creator of the work.




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ILLUSTRATION 2 Andreas Lidel, Trois quintettos pour flute, violon, deux alto viole et violon celle, Oeuvre V (Berlin: Amsterdam : J. J. Hummel, ca. 1780). Copenhagen, Royal Library, Gieddes Sämling V,10, mu 6208.0378, U134. Photo: Karsten Bundgaard, The Royal Library,

Copenhagen.

a Creative Commons license that allows people to remix free music downloaded from our

digital collections. The future of catalogues is interesting to think about, but now we regard our OPAC as

a bibliographical registry as well as an accumulation of knowledge. We hope to make the OPAC the place to collect information about particular items - and allow users to con tribute in special fields. It will be a great help if specialists could be consulted, and right now we are having discussions about how (or if?) we can make room for users' work lists, transcriptions of texts, and newly transcribed music from our facsimiles, etc. We see

crowd-sourcing as a potentially valuable contribution, but before further steps can be

taken, a number of problems must be thoroughly considered, such as what type of mate rial will be included, which user groups will have access, what do users and the library want to get out of this, and who holds the copyright of any user-generated material?

A look at usage statistics for the National Library's homepage shows that "noder"

(sheet music) is one of the top five search words for this part of the library! It would there fore be a good idea to collaborate with other national services which offer sheet music for sale or loan on different terms. These ideas have been presented to artists' organizations and music publishers and we all try to continue developing them. A possibility is also to




co-ordinate these ideas with the Danish Virtual Music library,9 which contains digitized periodicals, information about composers, and a database of university theses, etc. and other relevant websites.

Distributing information

The huge, deep, and fast changes in media in recent times open up many new possibili ties. It has never been easier to enrich sheet music with information on different levels. We can write longer explanatory texts on the library website, post an entry on our blog, publicize breaking news in our newsletter, communicate via Facebook, or offer a small ap plication on mobile phones to make it possible to stand in front of a house, statue, or in stitution and read about its musical connections, supplemented by listening to the music.

Whether our role as librarians is simply to collect material and make it available is a matter of continuous discussion. At the Royal Library in Copenhagen, we are fortunate also to have scholarly resources - in classical music, in popular music and in theatre - and a new department called the Danish Centre for Music Publication that publishes music from our collections and, not least, pursues studies in the philological field. This is an ex cellent combination, raising our level of knowledge, and results in our being a competent partner in the interplay with other research environments at universities, museums and archives. On the other hand it also imposes an obligation on us to approach the collections in a scholarly way, making it possible also to adjust our acquisitions policies.

Our ongoing dialogue with the scholarly research environment shows that it has a ten

dency to distance itself from the study of sources in preference for more theoretically based cultural studies. At the same time classical Western music - which for historical rea sons forms the core of our collection - is decreasing in popularity in favour of popular music, which is often much more difficult to document. Our acquisitions policy tries to adapt to this situation, so that we focus on Western classical music together with popular genres as

aspects of cultural expression in the broadest sense, together with other types of music. In this connection it is both necessary and fruitful to cooperate nationally and interna

tionally. Strategic alliances are crucial - with other similar institutions, with representa tives of musical life in general and not least with our users. Thus to a high degree we also see the national library as a partner in international projects such as the four R-projects10, Europeana (www.europeana.eu) etc., and as a cultural institution bringing music to life. The Royal library promotes an extensive series of concerts, lectures and exhibition ac

tivities, planned in cooperation with music staff so that we have input into such matters as

repertoire, presentations, and web access. This is a field that we intend to develop as part of a greater whole, balancing the library's educational and research function with the pub lic's thirst for direct experiences - not least in the digital world.

Denmark is a small country, and we are lucky to have well-functioning national data

bases and interlibrary cooperation. But because of our size, it is also important for us to

see the national music collection in an international context. Cultural exchange and part

nership are important to us - otherwise we would never have acquired the autograph of

Bach's Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut to enrich our collections.

9. <www.dvm.nu>

10. The four international cooperative projects in music, co-sponsored by IAML and other related inter

national associations: Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM), Répertoire International de

Littérature Musicale (RILM), Répertoire International de la Presse Musicale (RIPM) and Repertoire International

d'Iconographie Musicale (RIdlM).



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