18th and 19th century Italian Manuscripts and Early Prints

[JP3]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post on the forum. I am a music librarian at the University of Louisville. Some of you may have noticed that we have been contributing a number of scores to IMSLP over the past month or so.

Our library houses several special collections, including the Isidore Philipp Archives and the Ricasoli Collection. Most of my contributions so far have been from these 2 collections.

Of particular interest to me is the Ricasoli Collection, which consists of well over 400 18th and early 19th century Italian manuscripts and prints. A more extensive description of the collection and the history of its acquisition can be found on the web page above, and a PDF of the printed catalog for the collection can be found here.

I wanted to point out the PDF version of the collection's catalog, because I know there may be folks here who have a particular interest in some of the scores and manuscripts contained in this collection. I am currently digitizing materials starting from the beginning of the catalog, however, if anyone finds a piece listed anywhere in the catalog above that they would like for me to digitize and add to IMSLP, I would be very happy to do so. There are numerous first edition prints and manuscripts from very well-known composers, as well as composers that are quite obscure.

The IMSLP admins generously created a template for the collection, so that all scores can appear together on a single page in IMSLP. Click here to view the page.

I'm very excited to share this wonderful collection of music with you all. If anyone has a request for digitization, or any other questions about our library's collections, please send me a message on the forum, and I will respond as soon as I can.

Sincerely,
James P

[coulonnus]

Thanks. I had a look at a few of your uploads. Your color scans look great on my screen, but is a color scan the best when you print it?

[JP3]

Color scans generally aren't best for printing, unless you have a high quality color printer. I chose to scan this collection in color because I think more people are interested in viewing the intricate details of these manuscripts and early prints, rather than printing them for performance purposes. In addition, scanning these materials in black and white would also require a very large amount of cleanup time.

If there is a particular piece that I scanned in color that you would like for me to convert to B&W and clean up, please let me know. I would be glad to do it!

James