- Collection
Music and Theatre Collection
- Humanities and Social Sciences
The Music and Theater Collection was founded in 1947. It brings together three historical music and theater collections: 1. the City Library (Frankfurt ecclesiastical music manuscripts and opera collection), 2. the Rothschild Library (monument series, complete editions, literature on music and theater from around 1890 to 1940), and 3. the Manskopf Museum of Music History (autograph letters, portraits, museum objects). Funded by the DFG from 1949 to 2014, the Performing Arts Specialist Information Service, established in 2015 (with the support of the DFG), continues to acquire, index, and disseminate scientific material and information for research.
The primary tasks of the Music and Theater Collection are to provide scholars and users with literature on music and theater as well as sheet music, and to archive and catalog Frankfurt theater materials and the estates of Frankfurt musicians. Numerous dissertations – primarily in musicology and theater studies – have been written on individual holdings and based on the collections. In addition, editions have been published in the Telemann Selection Edition, the Frankfurt Telemann Editions, and individual editions.
