I would assume that almost any old library or private collection that includes old handwritten books has at least a couple of manuscripts that nobody has read in decades if not centuries.
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
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A few years ago, a researcher started going through a large stack of dusty old music manuscripts in an east European archive, and discovered an unknown work by Stravinsky, over 100 years old. I wonder what was in the rest of rhe stack.
Huh, that's an example of what I've been looking for
What phrase should I search for to learn more about the archive?
I Googled "Unknown Stravinsky Work Discovered," and found a bunch of articles, including these:
Thank you!
Another interesting example is a story by singer and Gershwin scholar Michael Feinstein. When he was a teen, he fell in love with George Gershwin's music, and discovered that his brother, Ira, the legendary lyricist who supplied the words to most of George's songs, lived nearby.
He went to Ira's house and knocked on the door, and introduced himself. Ira was happy to talk to the kid about he and George's old songs. During the conversation, Ira opened up the piano bench, and it was filled with old manuscripts in George's hand of totally unknown songs that had never been published.
Feinstein ended up being the annointed by Ira as the unofficial Gershwin scholar, and he later recorded many of those unknown songs.
He also told this story on NPR's Fresh Air:
In 1982, there turned up in Secaucus, N.J., at the Warner Brothers Music Warehouse, which is the place where Warner’s kept all of their stock of their published music that they would sell. Suddenly somebody who was working in that warehouse, a guy named Henry Cohen (ph), found these boxes and boxes of music that looked like manuscript material of not only George Gershwin but of Victor Herbert and Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Schwartz and Cole Porter and Vincent Youmans and on and on and on. And we were called - we, being Ira Gershwin, for whom I worked in 1982 - he was - what? - 83 or 84 at that point. And they said, there are these manuscripts of George's here and lyric sheets of yours, and somebody better come and look at them. And Ira said, oh, no, that stuff was destroyed long ago. There’s - that’s a mistake. So he sent me to look and see what was there only because of the insistence of the folks in New Jersey, even though Ira was convinced that we would find nothing. And it turns out that I found, amongst all these boxes, 87 original manuscripts in George Gershwin's hand plus copies of scores that had been lost for 50 and 60 years. For some reason, they were all there, and it turned out to be one of the greatest musical theater discoveries of the century.
Interesting indeed
But also those two are cases when we discovered more or less "working copies" of interest.
Has there been a similar find of a text that was copied and given (I'm trying to broadly cover a meaning of "published" here)
But do we know if those have been generally indexed?
In proper libraries, we probably have the author and title in a database somewhere but not the content. In private collections, all bets are off.
I guess the community of private collectors might have (doesn't have to be institutionalized, centralized nor digital, just the fact of knowing is enough) as a group some kind of grasp on who has what. But is that fact known?
Collections might have been inherited over generations. For some of them, the current owners may not have much interest in what they have and therefore not be aware of some rare copies.
Yes, for sure. But then that's a "lost cache". Similar to the works we'll find in a few years buried somewhere under the ground. But what about "active collections"?
There are still quite a few untranslated cuneiform tablets, as well as large numbers of rolled papyrus and paper scrolls that haven’t been read yet because they can’t be unrolled. For the latter they can now use CT scanning and machine learning to virtually unroll and read them
Yes, but that is a case when we knew we had them, we just couldn’t read them. I’m wondering if at least “index” of readable contents of most “libraries” is for sure known, mostly known or maybe there are many we don’t know what’s inside
I would assume that every serious collector of books, everybody who has more than a few shelves full, has not read all of them.
Hey, no need to call me out like that!
🤔 Isn't reading them the point of collecting?
You seriously made me wonder :D
But still, even if they don't read them, they know they have them. So the collector and the seller know that such book exists and is somewhere out there and the owner knows they have such title in their stash
It's like pets or kids. Some people collect them as objects or status symbols and don't really care about them.
That went dark very fast. I appreciate :D
I've never considered someone buying books as status symbols. But I can see that happening
Some books I buy to read now. Some books I buy to read at an undefined "later." Browsing my shelves is exciting when I know there are books there that I've yet to really encounter.
Ok, sure. But you still buy them to read them
the collector and the seller know
So you have never bought or inherited an old collection - large boxes rather than single books? "Going to sort them later..." :)
No :D
But then my question is, do we feel there are a lot of such collections? Or rather not?
To rephrase a little bit:
"Are there places where someone could pull off another Petrarch today?"
- yes
- no
- a few
- a lot
- only in Africa (see the answer in AskHistorians)
only in Africa (see the answer in AskHistorians)
While my answer was related to Africa, as that's where I'm most familiar with a paucity of study and an excess of material, I'd bet even money that there are plenty of other non-European (and outside of the Americas) collections that have yet to be fully catalogued, especially in the Islamic World and India. I just couldn't swear to it or name any regions in particular to look into.
They are always finding and using new technology the scan the dead sea scrolls
Yes, but that is a case when we knew we had them, we just couldn't read them. I'm wondering if at least "index" of readable contents of most "libraries" is for sure known, mostly known or maybe there are many we don't know what's inside