Beiträge zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Sammlung Düben

Abstract

On the Origins of the Düben Collection
The famous collection of musical manuscripts and prints collected by the Swedish court capellmeister Gustav Düben (1624–1690) and now preserved in the Uppsala University Library constitutes one of the most important sources for the history of music in Northern Europe during the second half of the seventeenth century. The complicated provenances of the sources are still in need of scholarly investigation; where they are revealed, they shed light on the tight net of Düben’s personal and professional contacts, particularly to musicians active in the Baltic region. Thus the identification of autographs proves that he had personal relations to David Pohle, Christian Flor, and Augustin Pfleger. Occasionally Düben was also able to acquire musical manuscripts from amateur musicians. An instructive case is a group of roughly 30 manuscripts, most of which bear the enigmatic signature “Assieg”. This collector can now be identified as Johann von Assig und Siegersdorf, a nobleman from Silesia, who came to Stockholm in 1673. While studying at Leipzig university (1669–1672), Assig had gathered a valuable collection of instrumental and vocal chamber music by mid-German and Viennese composers, which he apparently left with Düben when he took up his services in the Swedish army in 1674.