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Strecker Foundation Announces Transfer of Historic Schott Archive

Dec. 03, 2014

Strecker Foundation Announces Transfer of Historic Schott Archive

The Strecker Foundation in Mainz has made the historical archive of the Schott publishing house accessible to the public by selling it to two state libraries and six research institutions. The unique Schott Music publishing archive will be prepared according to current archival standards and digitized by the internationally renowned institutions and thus made accessible to musicologists and researchers in the best possible way.

Several years ago, the shareholders of Schott Music transferred the publishing archive to the Strecker Foundation, one of the largest private music foundations in Germany. The large quantity of archive material and concurrent growing interest in the collection by musicologists prompted the Foundation to sell the material. The buyers are the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz and six individual composer institutes, among them the Carl Orff Foundation and the Fondation Hindemith.

The set of materials comprises about 85,000 papers and documents from the archive which were received or created by Schott Music up to and including 1950. Among them are the historical production archive and the archives of musical autographs and first editions, as well as business documents from 1787 to 1945 and correspondence through 1950. The archive of letters alone consists of about 40,000 items, including 265 letters written by Richard Wagner and 690 by Paul Hindemith. Among the valuable music manuscripts is Richard Wagner's first handwritten draft of the text of the opera "The Mastersingers of Nuremberg." In addition, the historical archive contains the autographs of scores of major 20th-century works like "Carmina Burana" by Carl Orff and "Il canto sospeso" by Luigi Nono.

The Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Strecker Foundation, Peter Hanser-Strecker, declares:

We are grateful that the historical publishing archive of Schott Music will now be in the possession of outstanding libraries and research institutions and thus be accessible to the general public. We know the archive material that has been collected and preserved by the Schott and Strecker families over the centuries is now in excellent hands. With the proceeds from the sale, the Strecker Foundation will continue to support projects which advocate the importance of music in society. Thus, the work of former generations will be used toward the benefit and advancement of music.


The Strecker Foundation:

The Strecker Foundation was founded by the shareholders of the publishing house Schott Music and has – for more than ten years – supported projects which advocate the importance of music in society and contribute to the advancement of music. It is one of the largest private music foundations in Germany which offers financial support both to musicological and musical productions and to music education.

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