The Dukes of Arenberg and Music in the Eighteenth Century: The Story of a Music Collection

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Our colleague Marie Cornaz from RISM Belgium has recently published a revised and expanded edition of her Les ducs d’Arenberg et la musique au XVIIIesiècle. Histoire d’une collection musicale and it is available for the first time in English:

Marie Cornaz, The Dukes of Arenberg and Music in the Eighteenth Century: The Story of a Music Collection. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. iv, 267 p., 184 color ill. ISBN: 978-2-503-55557-7

This study is an in-depth exploration of the music collection begun and cultivated by the Arenberg family in present-day Belgium, beginning with Duke Léopold-Philippe (1690-1754) and continuing with Charles-Marie-Raymond (1721-1778) and Louis-Engelbert (1750-1820) d’Arenberg. Today the collection continues to be a private archive in Enghien (B-Earenberg). Through archival documents as well as the sources themselves, Cornaz’s generously illustrated book allows us to “discover and identify musical sources entirely unknown to us until now; these include works by the Italians Alessandro Scarlatti, Pietro Torri, and Antonio Vivaldi.”

Cornaz dedicates a chapter apiece to each of the three dukes and ends with a consideration of composer Paul d’Arenberg (1788-1844). By examining the lives of the Arenberg family alongside their practice of collecting and nurturing musical sources (amassing around 1,500 manuscripts and printed editions), Cornaz can “through the prism of the musical affinities of an aristocratic family …illustrate the evolution of taste in eighteenth-century Europe.”

The musical collection itself has previously been cataloged by Cornaz in “Inventaire complet du fonds musical des archives privées de la famille d’Arenberg à Enghien,” Revue belge de musicologie 58 (2004): 81-202.

Category: New publications