In addition to scores by national composers, the Franciscan Monastery Novo mesto sheet-music collection contains traces of diverse international music influences left through the previous centuries, primarily by Czech, German and Italian composers, in Novo mesto. The extent and content of the materials kept in the Novo mesto Monastery give sufficient grounds to surmise that a fairly extensive and technically proficient music ensemble was once active in this institution.
Given that a large part of the archival legacy has been destroyed, the collection of materials dating to earlier historical periods is less substantial. Nevertheless, while editing sheet-music materials, it has been established that the oldest examples of its manuscripts date to the mid-18th century, or even the first half of the 18th century, i.e. the mass in C major ms. Mus. 134 and diverse other mass fragments written for polyphonic singing and instrumental accompaniment. Unfortunately, the scores bear no references to the composers or copyists.
The collection comprises several excellently preserved sheet-music materials by known and unknown composers dating to the period between the second half of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century, a time when the collection was vastly expanded with the acquisition of works by various foreign composers who were then highly popular, as well as some less prominent artists. Works dating to the second half of the 19th century, when music life in Novo mesto was enriched by composer and organist Ignacij Hladnik and Franciscan composer and priest Hugolin Sattner, are even more extensive.
A special feature of the Monastery’s music-sheet collection is the set of works dating to the period beginning with the mid-18th century, which includes church music settings of Slovenian texts; these composers include some Slovenian names. In the 1960s, a significant and relatively extensive sheet-music collection was discovered in the Monastery’s eighteenth-century musical-score holdings. Bohemian-born Franciscan and organist Mauritius Pöhm is credited with compiling this important collection, especially remarkable for containing works by famous Classical-era Czech and other Central European composers. As most of the manuscripts comprising the collection were written on paper of domestic (Carniolan) origin or paper imported from Koroška (Carinthia) and Štajerska (Styria) regions, the compositions are purported to have been written in Slovenia. A copy of the first printed edition of quartets op. 1 by I. Pleyel, dating to around 1782, and a copy of the first printed edition of piano concertos op. 7 by Johann Christian Bach are transcribed on paper of foreign provenance. The excellently preserved materials constitute a valuable source of Novo mesto’s music history, and possibly imply wider international musical influences. These materials comprise Latin liturgical music, with a few examples of instrumental chamber compositions. Some are musical settings of Italian and German texts.
Instrumental compositions are among the earliest items in the collection, comprising several string quartets, trios and piano concertos by lesser-known artists, including Czech musicians and composers Jan Vanhal and Anton Kammel and an Austrian, Anton Zimmermann, as well as some Italian names (e.g. Rauzzini, Venanzio).
Other prominent examples of interesting music materials include works for larger formations, e.g. a collection of six of Haydn’s symphonies, published in 1782 by Artaria & Co., Vienna. An important specimen is a printed edition of Arie sciolte, e coro con sinfonia, dedicate all’ impereggiabile Signore Don Pietro Metastasio, Opera quarta by an unknown woman composer, Donna Josina (Giustina) van Boetzelaer, published in The Hague without a reference to the year of publication. Although, judging by the title, the composer was obviously in contact with the illustrious librettist Metastasio, and this was not her only work, her name is not included in any European music lexicon.
The collection’s one-off items also include three volumes of piano pieces by an Augsburg-based educator, Johann Xaver Nauss, whose works are a rarity in European libraries.
Additionally, a smaller musical legacy is held at the Novo mesto Chapter Library. Some stylistic features marking the materials from the so-called Pöhm’s Novo mesto period are also characteristic of Ljubljana Cathedral’s archival sheet-music collection, and the archives of the Franciscan Monastery in Ljubljana, kept in Klanjec, Croatia.
Maia Juvanc
