Anthony van Hoboken

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Anthony van Hoboken (born March 23, 1887 in Rotterdam , † November 1, 1983 in Zurich ) was a Dutch musicologist and important music collector. His outstanding achievement is the compilation of the first comprehensive index of all compositions by Joseph Haydn , the Hoboken index .

life and work

Anthony van Hoboken (1887–1983) musicologist, music collector. Grave in the Witikon cemetery, Zurich
Grave in the Witikon cemetery , Zurich

Anthony van Hoboken came from a traditional, long-established and wealthy Rotterdam merchant, banker and shipowner family. His inherited wealth made him financially independent throughout his life and enabled him to live entirely according to his inclinations. After graduating from school, he studied at the Technical University in Delft from 1906 to 1909 . However, his real interest was in music. In addition to studying engineering, he received lessons in piano and composition from Anton BH Verhey .

In 1909 he moved to Dr. Hoch's Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main , where he studied harmony with Bernhard Sekles and composition with Iwan Knorr . From 1917 he lived in Munich , where he had a villa built in Nymphenburger Walhallastraße 1, which he moved into in 1919. He moved in circles of the Schwabing bohemian , was in a relationship with Marietta di Monaco and gathered artists such as the painters Georg Schrimpf , Heinrich Maria Davringhausen , Rudolf Levy and the writer Oskar Maria Graf around him.

In Munich he got to know the composer Otto Vrieslander and, advised by him, began to build up an important collection of musical first and early editions and music theory literature from Bach to Brahms from 1919, based on the conviction that questions of interpretation were not only based on the manuscripts, but also of the first prints to be checked according to which a piece of music was performed in its time. With around 8000 titles, Van Hoboken's collection was the world's largest private collection of its kind. It was purchased in 1974 by the Republic of Austria for the music collection of the Austrian National Library . One focus of the collection is the works of Joseph Haydn, with around 1000 first and early editions.

On December 7, 1922, van Hoboken married the actress Annemarie Seidel , with whom he went on a trip around the world. In 1925 he settled in Vienna , where he became a student of the music theorist Heinrich Schenker , whom he had met on Vrieslander's recommendation. In talks with Schenker, van Hoboken agreed to finance a collection of photographic reproductions of autographs by great composers. In autumn 1927 the “Archive for Photograms of Musical Master Manuscripts” (abbreviated “Photogrammarchiv” or “Meisterarchiv”) was founded. In doing so, he realized a plan that Schenker had already pursued before the First World War: the archive was to serve as the basis for musicological research with the aim of replacing the many editions of works from the 19th century with original editions based on the manuscripts. In the "Call" for the foundation of the archive published in November 1927 it says:

“The works of the masters of music are mainly known to us today only according to the editions of them that are in circulation. However, these editions are mostly edited by others and in many ways no longer correspond exactly to the original. […] But since the manuscript is the best, even the only source for a correct study of the masterpieces, it is necessary to promote the widest possible dissemination of the original by means of photographic reproduction of the original! […] For this purpose I have decided to create an archive in which the photographic recordings of the most important manuscripts of our musical grandmasters are to be kept, where they can be viewed and where, on request, prints can be made to make them available to interested parties put. […] It is about nothing less than the preservation of our musical art, since only knowing the handwriting can correct the errors that have crept into the editions. "

Van Hoboken financed the archive entirely from his own resources. On restless travels across Europe, he sought to locate music manuscripts and obtain permission for reproduction from the owners. In 1934 the archive already comprised over 30,000 pages. Hoboken's appeal to the “preservation of our music art” found undreamt-of confirmation during the Second World War, as numerous manuscripts, the originals of which were lost during the war, have only been preserved in the archive as copies. Organizationally, the archive was part of the music collection of the Austrian National Library, to which van Hoboken donated it in 1957. The current stock is around 60,000 pages.

As early as 1927, van Hoboken planned to compile a chronological directory of Joseph Haydn's works. After decades of research and with the technical support from the publishing house , assured by Willy Strecker, the head of the Schott publishing house , from 1948 onwards, the first of three volumes of his thematic-bibliographical catalog raisonné of the works of Joseph Haydn was published by Schott in Mainz in 1957 , which made his lasting fame reasoned. This Hoboken directory placed the largely confusing and uncertain transmission and attribution of Haydn's works on a secure musicological basis for the first time. Similar to the Köchel index for Mozart and the German index for Schubert , an authoritative catalog raisonné was created, according to which Haydn's works are cited to this day. Since in many cases it was not possible to allocate the works precisely to a specific time, the directory, unlike originally planned, is not arranged chronologically but according to genre. A Hoboken number therefore consists of a Roman number for the work group (I-XXXII, e.g. I for the symphonies, III for the string quartets, XXII for the masses), followed by an Arabic work number. Volume 2 of the directory appeared in 1971, the final third volume in 1978.

Van Hoboken's marriage to Annemarie Seidel ended in divorce in 1932 without children. In his second marriage, he was married to Eva Hommel (stage name as poet: Eva Boy ) from March 30, 1933 . Her son Anthony jr. was born in 1937. After Austria's "annexation" to National Socialist Germany, van Hoboken moved to Switzerland in 1938, where the family first lived in the house of the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler in St. Moritz , then from 1940 to 1950 in Lausanne and from 1951 in Ascona . In 1977 he moved to Zurich, where he lived until his death. Van Hoboken rests in an honorary grave of the city of Zurich in the Witikon cemetery (Zurich).

Honors

In 1923 van Hoboken became an honorary member of the Munich Bach Society. In 1932 he received the Great Silver Medal of the Republic of Austria and was elected to the board of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna , of which he was a member of the Senate from 1973 and an honorary member from 1974. From 1950 to 1954 van Hoboken was a member of the Advisory Council of the Department of Music at Princeton University , Princeton NJ, USA. In 1954 he became an honorary member of the Society for Music Research (GfM), in 1957 the International Music Society and the Society of Friends of the Austrian National Library in Vienna. He received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Kiel (1957), Utrecht (1958) and Mainz (1979) and was appointed officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau in 1959. In 1960 his native city of Rotterdam awarded him the Penning van de Maze Studium et Cura. In 1962 van Hoboken received the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art 1st Class and became an honorary member of the Beethoven House Association in Bonn and the International Society for Musicology in Basel . In 1967 he received the Dr. Josef Bick Medal of Honor from the Association of Austrian Librarians .

Anthony van Hoboken was also a member of the International Association of Music Libraries (IVMB), the Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis (KVNM), the International Bach Society and the Joseph Haydn Institute, Cologne.

The composer Felix-Eberhard von Cube dedicated his Praeludium con Fuga in B ♭ op.21 / 1 (1952) to Anthony van Hoboken .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Complete text of the call at Schenker Documents Online
  2. ↑ Van Hoboken's letter to Schenker dated August 7, 1927 at Schenker Documents Online
  3. ^ Anthony van Hoboken: Foreword . In: Joseph Haydn. Thematic-bibliographical catalog of works . tape 1 . Schott's Sons, Mainz 1957, p. XI-XII ( online at: ia600509.us.archive.org [PDF; accessed June 3, 2014]).
  4. ↑ https://www.tobias-broeker.de/rare-manuscripts/af/cube-felix-eberhard-von/

Works

literature

  • Joseph Schmidt-Görg (Ed.): Anthony van Hoboken. Festschrift for the 75th birthday . Schott, Mainz 1962.
  • Nortrud Gomringer (ed.): Lion Feuchtwanger, letters to Eva van Hoboken. Ed. Splitter, Vienna 1996.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hoboken, Anthony van
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch musicologist and music collector
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Rotterdam
DATE OF DEATH November 1, 1983
Place of death Zurich