SCORES

The RPS Collection includes more than 270 volumes of manuscript scores. Most date from the 19th Century, from the extensive orchestral library gradually amassed by the Society from the its first years. Many parts have survived the wear-and-tear and passage of time but, with the co-operation of the Royal Academy of Music, a small number of the original sets have recently been placed alongside the scores.

The full score of Mendelssohn’s First Symphony, which the composer presented to the Society after giving the work’s premiere with us in 1829, is outstanding among the autograph manuscripts, but the collection also includes autographs by such lesser known nineteenth-century composers as Ignaz Pleyel, Sigismund Neukomm, Cipriani Potter as well as Luigi Cherubini, Louis Spohr and William Sterndale Bennett.

There is also a range of authoritative copyists' scores sent by composers when the RPS gave the world premiere or first British performances of works.

Central among these jewels is the score of the Ninth Symphony sent by Beethoven himself to the Society in 1824: it carries his autograph dedication to the society and the copyists’ work is liberally corrected in his hand throughout.

The remainder of the scores, the largest number, are contemporary copies prepared for use at the Society’s concerts. The scores in this category have great importance as a record of repertory and performance practice, giving the variant texts performed at the time, and often including the markings of the conductors for these early performances.

For much of the 19th Century, this library of scores was used more widely than for the Society’s own concerts; as a result of consultation by, and loans to, other musicians it played a direct role in the development of the classical repertory generally in Britain.