The Gottfried Fraenkel collection at Illinois.

An, Yu Lee ; Krummel, D.W.

Gottfried Samuel Fraenkel (1901-1984) was a famous entomologist, not a music scholar, nor a professional musician. Nevertheless, he was a knowledgeable collector and sometimes a shrewd dealer. The University of Illinois Library acquired Gottfried S. Fraenkel's collection thirty years ago. In 2014, the collection was finally fully cataloged and made available for scholars. It comprises over 1,300 works of first and early editions by standard Western European composers from baroque, classical, and romantic eras. His collection is a result of someone who genuinely loved collecting, delighted in finding musical treasure, and appreciated music. This article is a tribute to Fraenkel, the music collector, and his story is one worth telling.

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Gottfried Fraenkel (1901-1984) was a famous entomologist who specialized in insect endocrinology. (1) He was also a capable musician and, at a difficult time in his life, a committed and knowledgeable collector of early music. On his death, the University of Illinois acquired his music collection, which was rich in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century performing editions. (2) It has now been cataloged and is available for study-and its story is worth recalling.

Born in Munich, Fraenkel received his doctorate there in 1925. In 1927, he moved to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and in 1931 to the University of Frankfurt. In 1933, Fraenkel and his family fled Germany and moved to London, where at first, he worked as a research associate at University College, and was funded by English scientists who out of their wages helped fellow refugee scientists--with a "new language, new culture," and "almost no salary." (3) Two years later he became a lecturer at Imperial College, London. The going could not have been easy, with the need to support a wife and two young sons (Gideon, now an emeritus chemistry professor at Ohio State, and Daniel, now an immunology professor at Harvard). In 1948, Fraenkel was persuaded to emigrate and came to the University of Illinois, where he flourished as a scientist. He remained in Urbana for the rest of his life, supervising many dissertations and authoring several hundred research publications.

Throughout his life, Fraenkel also performed as a pianist and chamber music cellist. He is known to have spent much time on music as a child. Even thirty years after his death, his participation and contribution to local amateur music activities are occasionally remembered in Urbana. His home music making at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts was recalled by one of the hostesses, Cecelia Fuglister:

   Gottfried Fraenkel was another special musical friend who
   contributed greatly to the Juniper Point musical evenings. He came
   as a talented cellist, but it became evident that his piano playing
   was excellent and gentle. As those are ideal characteristics for
   chamber piano, Gottfried became the regular chamber pianist ... his
   son Danny often joined in on the violin. (4)

In 1940, the Clarendon Press published Fraenkel's The Orientation of Animals, Kineses, Taxes and Compass Reactions, coauthored with Donald L. Gunn. His lengthy introduction to the reprint recalls that very few copies had been printed because of wartime shortages, and the work was little publicized. Hitler had thus given him a double whammy, first in kicking him out of Germany, then in impairing his repute and royalties. In time, however, this book would also provide him with a valuable personal introduction.

To understand the next chapter in the story, we need to look at the book world around 1950. The supply of printed materials in general was far short of the demand, and reprint publishers arose to meet the needs through offset photolithography. Some reprinters specialized in music, reprinting editions from Leipzig publishers whose stock and plates had been bombed out during the war. The imprints of Edwin F. Kalmus, the brothers Irving and Alexander Broude, and the International Music Company are still seen in our music collections. Other reprinters issued multivolume periodical sets (sold at huge profits to libraries) which were now the beneficiaries of federal funding. (5) Slightly different in its profile, however, was Dover Publications, which issued both reprints and original works, primarily for the retail book trade. Its founder, Hayward Cirker (1918-2000), covered the world of learning in his interests, but music was among his special loves.

Fraenkel's The Orientation of Animals was an important book. Cirker's science advisors knew it and presumably called it to his attention, and in 1961 he reprinted it. One can imagine what happened next: sometime in the early 1960s, Cirker invited Fraenkel to visit New York during his travels between Urbana and Woods Hole. Fraenkel took him up on the offer, and between the two of them, an idea emerged for a music book.

Pictorial and Decorative Music Title Pages from Music Sources: 201 Examples from 1500-1800 was published by Dover in 1968.6 In his foreword, Fraenkel speaks of his "life-long interest in the early original prints of music, editions issued in past centuries, at the time of the composer, by the composer himself or in his behalf.... Everybody who has handled such old editions is familiar with the charm and beauty of many of the title pages." Who advised him on the titles to include, on the location of copies to be photographed, and on the content of the annotations? Who did Cirker call on to referee a music book by a scholar with no established credentials in music? (7) Fraenkel acknowledges his two models: John GrandCarteret's Les litres illustres et I'image au service de la musique, published in 1904 by Bocca Freres in Turin; and Walter von zur Westen's Musiktitel aus vier fahrhunderten, issued in 1921 as a Festschrift in the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Leipzig music engraving firm of C. G. Roder. (8)

Fraenkel's scientific training had led him to look critically at music sources, and his music lessons as a child were no doubt well remembered. They stimulated his discovery of his bibliophilic instincts, of his own "life-long interest in the early original prints of music, editions issued in past centuries, at the time of the composer, by the composer himself or in his behalf." (9) He had little money, but he could not have been in a happier setting than London just after the war, where the supply far exceeded the demand. The English had been buying local and imported music for well over two centuries. Publishing of new editions was constrained by wartime regulations, capital resources, and supplies, but the antiquarian stock was nearly bottomless. Street sales were common at general markets that still flourish today, like Portobello Road and Bermondsey Market, but also and perhaps especially at the book stalls that once lined Farringdon Road until about two decades ago. Among many antiquarian dealers, a few were already known to specialize in music, and others joined the trade soon after the war. Although Fraenkel may have been short on financial resources, bis collecting at that time was undeterred and splendid.

Fraenkel's collection today includes over a thousand early editions of works by Western European composers from the baroque, classical and romantic eras. He had grown up performing this repertory that was central to London musical life and abundant in the antiquarian market. (10) The condition of his collection is not that of a wealthy music bibliophile, although many of the copies he probably acquired for a shilling or two would today command prices in the hundreds of dollars. He did not have the financial resources of industrialists like Paul Hirsch or Anthony van Hoboken, or successful attorneys like James Fuld. His collection is a miscellany, unified by a collector's passion. His collection is of material the likes of which musicians once used in performance. Music bibliographers will also find a wealth of delights and challenges.

Among the early strengths are Walsh editions of Handel, including Athalia, Alexander's Feast, Israel in Egypt, Saul, Samson, Joseph and his Brethren, Semele, Hercules, Belshazzar, Judas Maccabaeus, Occasional Oratorios, Susanna, The Choice of Hercules, and Jephtha. Several have the added imprint of John Hare; others have a blank space where Hare's imprint has been punched out. Fraenkel also owned a copy of Songs in Messiah, with Walsh's (rather than his successor Randall's) title page.

Arcangelo Corelli's trio sonatas and concerti grossi, also Francesco Geminiani's reworking of Corelli's violin sonatas, opp. 1, 2, and 3, and three sets of Geminiani's own concerti grossi, were issued in parts by Walsh, also often by Etienne Roger in Amsterdam (sometimes Walsh's partner, sometimes his competitor), and frequently reissued. Fraenkel was able to pick up parts for several works and from several different editions variously bound together. There are duplicate parts (for instance, three identical violino primo parts) in varying physical conditions. Parts that have a title page can usually be assigned to a particular edition. Lacking title pages, however (and this is often the case), it is rarely possible to determine the particular edition or issue to which a particular part belongs. Fraenkel enjoyed a kind of poker game. He could sometimes assemble a complete set, but not always. To modern catalogers the results are a challenge, if not a nightmare. In the past, they often presumed to disassemble the surviving evidence to describe it. Today, the practice is to preserve the evidence in its historical context, leaving catalogers the task of unifying the work in the bibliographical record, or conjecturing the unification of parts that were originally together but are now split between several physical items.

One of the happier treasures in the collection is a bound volume containing two of Hans-Georg Nageli's early editions of J. S. Bach: Die Kunst der Fuge (BWV 1808) and the Clavier Sonaten mit obligater Violine (BWV 1014-1019). These date from Johann Nikolaus Forkel's Bach revival, several decades before the more famous revival by Felix Mendelssohn. Later Bach editions include the Well-Tempered Clavier in an 1813 Omont edition and an 1840s Griepenkerl edition, as well as 1853 violin-clavier sonatas with Robert Schumann's fingerings.

Breitkopf & Hartel's Oeuvres completes of Mozart and Haydn are striking in appearance: printed from Breitkopf's movable music type, in oblong format on heavy paper and in copper-green wrappers, with title-page vignettes and often incipits. Fraenkel found only three of the seventeen Mozart volumes (1798-1806), in several genres, but all twelve of the Haydn Oeuvres complettes (1800-1806), devoted to keyboard works, and several volumes of the Oeuvres de J. Haydn Masse.

Understandably, Fraenkel was on the lookout for great early chamber music. Most of his nearly a hundred Haydn editions date from the composer's lifetime, many in early London editions. In general, the ninety-odd Mozart editions are dated a bit later. The Andre Bibliotheque musicale partitions of the Mozart quartets and quintets from the 1820s are nearly complete, as are all of the early and middle Beethoven; there are also four of the Lavenu scores issued in London soon after 1800. Over a hundred more early Beethoven editions come mostly from Vienna. Most of the copies are not first states of the first editions, but many of them are in the original wrappers. (Fraenkel's Beethoven quartets, in other words, are more for the Hellmesberger Quartet than the Schuppanzigh.) (11)

The famous Select Collection series of British national airs, for which the Edinburgh publisher George Thomson commissioned musical arrangements by Pleyel, Kozeluch, Haydn, and Beethoven, is represented in several items. Some of them complete with violin and cello accompaniments, others with vocal scores only; some are handsomely bound, while others, in the fragile original wrappers, are unbound. Most of them are signed by Thomson on their title pages.

Robert Schumann's songs, solo piano works, chamber music, and symphonies in score are represented in nearly a hundred first and early editions. Nearly fifty early Mendelssohn editions come mostly from Germany and England. The Chopin holdings include a bound Konvolut with twenty-four first and early editions, most of them German. (12)

Surely the single most valuable item in the collection is the vocal score for Hector Berlioz's Les Troyens; it is the only surviving copy with the prefatory page dedicating the work to Princess Carolyn de Sayn Wittgenstein, and with corrections in Berlioz's hand. Fraenkel discusses it in his only known article in a musicological journal. (13) Subsequent correspondence between Fraenkel and Hugh Macdonald from 1963 to 1965, was published by Barenreiter in the New Edition of the Complete Works of Berlioz; the originals are preserved with the score. (14) Fraenkel reported that he "picked up a battered copy of 'Les Troyens' in one of the music shops on the left bank in Paris." (15) We should all be so fortunate!

Other bound volumes are devoted to shorter works for amateur music-making at home: the repertory of songs performed at the famous eighteenth-century pleasure gardens and musical theaters; easy rondos and variations on popular tunes such as Rule Britannia and God Save the King; overtures by Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and others; short landler, waltzes, galops, polkas, and mazurkas for the piano by composers like Lanner and the Strausses (including Isaac Strauss, now mostly forgotten but celebrated in his day as "the French Strauss"). These songs have simple piano accompaniments. The instrumental works are for piano or piano duet, often with German flute part at the end, or for popular instrumental combinations. These may be minor works, but proper cataloging usually requires detective work, especially in the absence of title pages.

Fraenkel also acquired several treatises. The earliest book in his collection is a seventh edition of Playford's Introduction to the Skill of Musick (1674). Other books include Rousseau's Dictionnaire de musique (1768), two volumes of Charles Burney's Present State of Music in Germany ... (1773), William Bingley's Musical Biography (1814), and a second edition Of John Sainsbury's Dictionary of Music (1827). There are also several anthologies: a third edition of Orpheus Britannicus (1721), the two books of William Croft's Musica Sacra (1724-25), and a fifth edition of William Tans'ur's A Compleat Melody, or The Harmony of Sion (1774). Rarities now, but in Fraenkel's day these volumes were commonplace.

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The range of Fraenkel's musical tastes, however, was actually quite narrow. Very few works date from the twentieth century. The great Italian opera composers are modestly represented. There is one Tchaikovsky song, a few Italian opera arias, a Leipzig score of William Sterndale Bennett's Capriccio, three works by Debussy, several by Reger, but none by Mahler or Richard Strauss. At the Littauer Music Store in Tel Aviv, however, he did stumble onto a Konvulut that included Stravinsky's Ragtime in the famous 1920 Chester edition with the cover by Pablo Picasso (see fig. 1). It may seem curious but it is probably telling that his repertory largely conforms to the pantheon that was analyzed in the studies of Heinrich Schenker. Whereas there is no evidence that Fraenkel explored music theory at all, he was, however, a performer and listener, as well as a collector.

The Fraenkel Collection is, in sum, a place to study the texts of great composers, not in the form of the original evidence but in the form known during the first generations after the composers' deaths. The surviving physical objects still command respect, and on examining them, new bibliographical details will often catch the reader's eye and lead to new questions. (16) Reception history will be the primary interest, as manifest in the evidence of publishing and ownership.

For Fraenkel's books, the provenance--the history of particular copies, as traced back through the owners, dealers, and eventually the publishers--is particularly intriguing. Where did Fraenkel get his books? Several bear the trade labels of music antiquarians like Mummery (established in 1945) and Reeves (in business since the nineteenth century), as well as Foyle's, the general bookseller on Charing Cross. (17) One of the Corelli volumes has a bookplate of William H. Cummings, whose notable collection was auctioned at Sotheby's in 1917. There is also a letter dated 19 May 1942, in which Fraenkel thanks Mrs. Challenger, otherwise unidentified, for finding his second volume of Burney's Present State. Most of the collection, however, comes from sources unnamed.

Earlier provenance history is also recorded in owners' autograph inscriptions, music sellers' stamps and labels, even program notes pasted to blank pages of music and endpapers, as well as binder's volumes from before the middle of the nineteenth century, a few with names stamped in gilt on leather labels on the front covers. The most notable owner's autograph is that of Otto Goldschmidt (1829-1907), husband and accompanist of Jenny Lind, who signed the Fraenkel copy of the Simrock edition of Beethoven's First Symphony (see fig. 2). The inner front cover of Sainsbury's Dictionary of Musicians has an impressively decorative armorial bookplate that, with the help of heraldry sources, can be assigned to the Scottish family of Henry Erroll Stuart Sherson (1858-1934). Another volume tantalizingly names a "Miss Austen."

A volume labelled "Miss L. H. Stuart Wortley" contains Giacomo Gotifredo Ferrari's Four canzonets & two duetts, with piano accompaniment, published in London in 1830 and dedicated to Miss Louisa Harcourt Stuart-Wortley (1788-1848). Ferrari also mentions in his 1830 memoir that, on his way back to London from Scotland, he stopped for a few days at Belmont, the home of Louisa's father, for letters of recommendation. (18) In this passage he refers to "Miss L. Worthley, ora Contessa Lovaine," whose husband was Lord Lovaine, later Earl of Beverley. Other Fraenkel volumes have covers gilt stamped "Miss L. H. Wortley" and "Lady Lovaine." Another includes Ferrari's Capi d' Opera dedicated to "the right hon[ora]ble Lady C. Stuart Wortley," probably Louisa's mother. This work was published by subscription, and the subscriber list names other members of the Wortley family. Wortley family volumes, likely acquired by Fraenkel all at the same time, contain only Italian vocal music, so as to suggest the composer's patronage.

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Many music publishers were also retailers, and they often traded and sold each other's imprints, as recorded by inked or blind stamps. Occasionally several stamps appear on a single copy. Changes in stamps can establish import dates. Many include addresses. Some Ewer stamps mention his partner Johanning. The London Gazette, the official paper of the crown, includes legal notices, among them, on 3 July 1829, an announcement of the dissolution of the partnership between John Jeremiah Ewer & Julius Johanning, as of the 25th July 1829: "all debts, due and owing to the said partnership firm are to be paid by the said John Jeremiah Ewer," at "1 Bow Church Yard, in the City of London, and also at 20 Tichborne Street, Piccadilly, in the County of Middlesex." The stamp "Ewer & Johanning Importers of Foreign Music 263 Regent St. & Bow Church Yard" (see fig. 3) must have been used earlier.

Pasteover slips were often used by music publishers to sell unsold stock taken over from an original publisher, or imported music. Some title pages are stamped with German export stamps that say "Vertrag vom 13 Mai 1846" (see fig. 4). The stamp refers to the international copyright agreement between Britain and Prussia signed on that date. (19) Publications bearing this stamp were imported into England after this date. Prices in shillings and pence were often added to English imports. Foreign works were routinely introduced in England, and Ewer, Novello, Cocks, and Boosey frequently advertised their businesses as importers (see figs. 3, 5-7). A high proportion of Fraenkel's music came from German publishers, but many of his copies had spent most of their lifetimes in London.

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The evidence in Fraenkel's copies--now summarized on the cataloging records--reflects some of the ways in which in the late-nineteenth-century music publishing world was effectively cohering. Other evidence suggests how much the copies were used in public or private performance. While use can sometimes be evidenced in Fraenkel copies, this must most often be conjectural, and it is usually difficult to describe in bibliographical records. The collection itself is now preserved, in any case, and described for future scholarship.

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(1.) His work as a scientist is recalled in C. Ladd Prosser, Stanley Friedman, and Judith H. Willis, "Gottfried Samuel Fraenkel: April 23, 1901-October 26, 1984," in the National Academy of Science's Biographical Memoirs (U.S.) 59 (1990): 169-95; and Rachel Galun, "Gottfried Samuel Fraenkel," Phytoparasitica 13, no. 1 (1985): 81-82.

(2.) The Fraenkel Collection is announced among the "Recent Acquisitions" in the University of Illinois Library Friends at Urbana-Champaign's Friendscript 7, no. 2 (Summer 1985). In 1987 the library' commissioned Sidney Berger to design a Fraenkel bookplate.

(3.) Prosser, et al., 81.

(4.) William Simmons and Cecelia Bowerman Fuglister, "House Music at the Fuglisters and How It Influenced Music Making in Woods Hole since 1942," Spritsail 7, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 11.

(5.) Some librarians referred as this as the "reprint racket."

(6.) Some copies have a title that begins "Decorative Music Title Pages."

(7.) For advice, Cirker is said to have often called on the music faculty of Queens College, Saul Novack in particular. Novack's papers at the University of North Texas document some of his work for Dover, but there is nothing on the Fraenkel book. As for Fraenkel, he left no correspondence to suggest who had advised him.

(8.) Several general title-page anthologies also include music books, and music title pages are also seen in anthologies of music iconography such as Georg Kinsky's History of Music in Pictures, with Robert Haas, et al., and an introd. by Eric Blom (London: J. M. Dent; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1930); and Marc Pincherle's An Illustrated History of Music, ed. Georges and Rosamond Bernier, trails, by Rollo Myers (New York: Reynal, 1959; London: Macmillan, 1960). Guy Marco prepared The Earliest Music Printers of Continental Europe: A Checklist of Facsimiles Illustrating their Work (Charlottesville: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1962).

(9.) Pictorial and Decorative Title Pages, v.

(10.) It is difficult to date Fraenkers collecting activity. Most of the collection was probably assembled between 1940 and 1960. At Urbana, the collection was stored in the Music Library from 1985 until its transfer to the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library in 2014. Several music students in the library school used it for bibliography projects: a class assignment in 1985 undertook rudimentary descriptive bibliography work, and later Erin Mullen (Mayhood) worked on the early works of Schumann, and Diana Eynon worked on the Chopin editions. Recently, Katherine Chandler and Ethan Henderson assessed the preservation needs. In 1985, Fraenkel's card catalog was trsed by Krurnmel, who in working with David Hunter, assigned accession numbers and organized the collection. An's cataloging in 2014, following DCRM (M) standards, is complete except for a few single pages and unidentified manuscript fragments.

(11.) Many of Beethoven's quartets were first performed by the Schuppanzighs, later by the renowned Hellmesbergers. Fraenkel could not find or afford the first editions that the Schuppenzighs would have known, but the later editions, which the Hellmesbergers would have known, were still available and affordable. They also reflected the performance traditions of their day. Typically, performers would choose the later editions but collectors always sought the firsts.

(12.) The Fraenkel Collection will inevitably be compared with that of another respected Midwestern scientist, the meteorologist George W. Platzman (1920-2008), devoted entirely to Chopin, and now at the University of Chicago, much of it now accessible online. Platzman's musical interests were also nurtured in his childhood, but his interest in Chopin extended into his retirement years: he could assemble much of his collection under happier financial circumstances (admittedly when copies were much more expensive), and explore its bibliographical details. The rudimentary bibliographical work that Fraenkel could do in the 1950s and 1960s reflects the state of knowledge in his day. (One "Cash Book," for instance, records his sketches of indexes of plate numbers and publishers' addresses.) Platzman's work, seen in his Chofrin Online Catalog., could extend over many decades, and reflect nearly a half-century of later work in music bibliography. His lovely Web site (http://chopin.lib.uchicago.edu/chopin-catalog) reproduces publishers stamps and his careful reasonings of the stemma behind and the dates of particular copies are models for the cataloging of rare music today.

(13.) Fraenkel, "Berlioz, the Princess and 'Les Troyens,' " Music Cs? Letters 44, no. 3 (July 1963): 254.

(14.) The Troyens score now has a call number 782.12 B45t1865, separate from the rest of the collection.

(15.) Fraenkel, "Berlioz, the Princess and 'Les Troyens,'" 254.

(16.) Examining some of Corelli's editions a few years ago, for instance, Leo Treitler noticed, on several pages, phantom offprintings of brief passages from other pages of the music. The original presswork must have been hasty, and these were very late Walsh editions, probably several decades after the first press runs, but when there was still some demand for the music. In this case, however, the phantom offprintings were not reverse images, as would be expected when copies were placed on top of other copies before the ink had completely dried. The offprintings were regular and not reversed images. These could have come from the paper touching the plates briefly for a second time, or from intermediary sheets with the reversed images on them that were not quite dry. The phantom texts are hard to identify, and the events in the press room are hard to explain. This is a matter for future historians of the eighteenth-century engraving crafts. Such details, if captured at all on digitized copies, usually need to be closely studied on the originals, although the digitizations can still save time and travel costs in comparing originals.

(17.) Gideon Fraenkel recalls an incident at Foyle's when his father found a valuable music item under-priced in a general section. He bought it and took it around to the music specialist, who bought it in turn, netting Fraenkel a profit, which he then spent on a music book that he particularly wanted.

(18.) Gotifredo Ferrari, Aneddoti piacevoli e interessanti actorsi nella vita di Giacomo Gotifredo Ferrari, operetta scritta da lui medesimo, 2 vols. (London: G. G. Ferrari, 1830), 2:114.

(19.) Jane Brown and Gregory Jones, "The English Struwwelpeter and the Birth of International Copyright," The Library: The Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 14, no. 4 (December 2013): 394-95.

Yu Lee An, who cataloged the Fraenkel Collection in 2014 at the University of Illinois at Urbana (UIUC) as a visiting scholar-in-residence at the Graduate School of Library' and Information Science, was formerly McGregor project cataloger in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. In 1985, D. W. Krummel, professor emeritus of library science and music at UIUC, helped in acquiring and organizing the Fraenkel Collection at the University of Illinois Library. This essay is a revised and condensed version of the much fuller report by Dr. An dealing with the bibliographical and publishing history of the collection, which is now part of the UIUC Library collection. The authors would like to acknowledge the help of Nathan Shelby Evans and Dennis Sears in arranging for the illustrations.