Music manuscripts from Cologne now linked to digitized copies
Thursday, March 19, 2026
One of the major benefits of the RISM database is the option to link the description of manuscripts and printed editions with digitized copies of the original sources, thereby allowing users to access right away the items of interest to them.
A while ago the Cologne University and City Library (RISM siglum D-KNu) provided us with a list of links to newly digitized copies, which we have promptly added to the corresponding RISM records. The collection had been cataloged for RISM in 2014; the current update significantly enhances the usability of these source descriptions by adding links to no fewer than 480 of them.
Most of the sources in question had once belonged to the collection of the Cologne musicologist Ernst Bücken (1884–1949), which the Cologne University and City Library acquired in 1950. Some of the records, however, describe sources purchased at a 1924 Cologne auction from the estate of the Bonn-based Beethoven scholar Erich Prieger (1849–1913). Overall, the most precious treasures of the collection include several manuscript scores of oratorios and sacred cantatas prepared in Central Germany in the second half of the 18th century. Among these we find Johann Georg Röllig’s Markuspassion, composed in Zerbst in 1750, which for some time was mistakenly attributed to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach RISM Catalog | RISM Online, as well as copies of Georg Benda’s Trauer-Ode (Gotha 1767) RISM Catalog | RISM Online, and the Easter cantata Der Sieg des Erlösers by Ernst Wilhelm Wolf RISM Catalog | RISM Online. Yet another outstanding treasure from Bücken’s estate is the lute tablature Livre pour le lut, a collection of 33 pieces that contains not only anonymous works but also compositions by the German lutenist Silvius Leopold Weiss RISM Catalog | RISM Online, and in conclusion it is also worth calling attention to a bulky manuscript collection of chamber cantatas by Alessandro Scarlatti RISM Catalog | RISM Online.
The links to the digitized documents are already available for research on RISM Online; from April 2026, they will also be displayed in the RISM Catalog.
Further reading:
Georg Kinsky, Musiksammlung aus dem Nachlasse † Dr. Erich Prieger – Bonn nebst einigen Beiträgen aus anderem Besitz. 3. Teil: Musikerbriefe, Handschriften, Musikalien, Cologne 1924.
Franz J. Giesbert (ed.), Lautenbuch “liure pour le lut” Köln, 18. Jahrhundert: nach einer Handschrift der Kölner Stadtbibliothek, Mainz 1965.
Hans-Joachim Schultze, “Markus-Passion und kein Ende: Zur angeblichen Passions-Cantatte von Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach,” in: Festschrift Bernd Baselt, Klaus Hortschansky and Konstanze Musketa (eds.), Kassel 1995, pp. 455–464.
Thomas Synofzik, “Kantaten von Alessandro Scarlatti im Bücken-Nachlass der Kölner Universitätsbibliothek,” in: Festschrift Dietrich Kämper, Norbert Bolin (ed.), Köln 2001, pp. 35-44.
Peter Schmidt, “Ernst Bücken (1884-1949),” in: Gelehrte – Diplomaten – Unternehmer: Kölner Sammler und ihre Bücherkollektionen in der Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln, Köln 2003, pp.180-187.
Image: Easter cantata Der Sieg des Erlösers by Ernst Wilhelm Wolf (1735-1792), Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek Köln, shelfmark 5 P 209, from the Ernst Bücken Collection (Public Domain Mark 1.0)
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