THE GRIEG ARCHIVES AT BERGEN PUBLIC LIBRARY
by Siren Steen (Bergen offentlige bibliotek)

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THE GRIEG ARCHIVES AT BERGEN PUBLIC LIBRARY

Siren Steen (Bergen offentlige bibliotek)

 

In 1906, ten months before his death, Edvard Grieg added a codicil to his will. In it, he and his wife Nina bequeathed his music manuscripts, articles and letters, printed music, books and other material to Bergen Public Library on condition that the library preserve them and make them accessible to the Bergen public. Both Edvard and Nina Grieg apparently had a strong wish that all the documents they had so carefully collected throughout a long musical career should pass to their home town, Bergen. They wanted the collection to be easily accessible to everyone, which they felt it would be in a public library. Bergen Public Library was therefore chosen to administer this great and valuable bequest. In 1919, Troldhaugen, their residence in Bergen, was sold by public auction, and the bequest handed over to the library. In 1930 Nina Grieg, from her home in Denmark, sent her unique collection of letters from musicians, artists, authors, etc. to the library. Over the years the collection of original documents has been augmented by gifts and by purchases. The Grieg Archives are continuously updated with new literature and other information on Edvard Grieg and his music.

In 1993 the 150th anniversary of Edvard Grieg's birth was celebrated in grand style both in Norway and abroad, and the Grieg Archives were an indispensable resource for anyone who wished to contribute studies of Grieg. A great number of documents resulting from the 1993 Grieg Anniversary were added to the Grieg Collection and are available for research. In 1962 Bergen Public Library initiated the compilation of the Edvard Grieg Gesamtausgabe, which was completed in 1995. This twenty-volume complete collection of Grieg's compositions, with commentaries, was published by Peters Musikverlag. Manuscript music sheets from the Grieg Archives were published there for the first time. 

 

Contents of the Grieg Archives     (1)  -   (2)  

A. Holograph material

I. Edvard Grieg

  • Musical works
    About 150 manuscripts, including juvenilia, songs not in cycles, and previously unpublished works, among them his C minor Symphony

  • Sketches
    Three folders containing sketches, ideas, discarded compositions, works in progress (including a second piano concerto), and unidentified fragments.

  • Exercise books
    Three books from Grieg's conservatory years, with corrections by his teachers

  • Articles
    Manuscripts of works commissioned for magazines

  • Letters
    About 700 letters by Edvard Grieg, including 400 to his publisher, Peters, in Leipzig

  • Diaries
    From 1865, 1865-66, 1905-06 and 1907

  • Account books
    1880-1902. Grieg kept meticulous accounts of all his expenditure down to each postage stamp (often with the name of the addressee in brackets). In the 1885 book there are drawings of his new home, Troldhaugen, with measurements of the furniture and a list of plants for the garden.

II. Other

  • Nina Grieg.
    Letters

  • Rikard Nordraak
    A bound volume of musical compositions by Grieg's close friend

  • Compositions and poems
    From colleagues and friends (including a "musical greeting" from Johannes Brahms); items sent by young people to Grieg for evaluation

  • Correspondence
    About 5,000 letters to Edvard and Nina Grieg. Of great general interest, this collection includes letters not only from famous men and women - musicians, authors, publishers, concert agents-but from admirers, people who had written poems or librettos they thought suitable for Grieg's setting, destitute artists seeking financial assistance, etc. Many letters of a business nature have Grieg's replies drafted on the back.

B. Printed Material

  • Grieg's musical collection
    His own and other works, many with personal dedications. Corrections in Grieg's hand are found on some of his works.

  • First editions of Grieg's music
    A collection purchased in Denmark in 1962

  • Diplomas, degrees, examination certificates

  • Concert programs
    Two bound volumes, one of concerts Grieg attended while a student in Leipzig, the other of concerts in which Grieg, and often Nina, performed.

  • The Grieg family library

  • Books on Grieg and his music

  • Press cuttings
    Current material supplied by a commercial agency.

C. Griegiana

Photographs; drawings by Grieg and sketches by artist friends; autograph album from the 1860s; Nina's briefcase from her later years with letters and photographs, her last passport.

D. Sound Recordings

Discs, tapes, pianola rolls

E. Photocopies of letters, manuscripts, photographs in other collections

 

The Grieg Project: The Grieg archives "go digital" 

Items from the archives are frequently requested by researchers, students, and musicians, both professional and amateur. The files are well organised, but not yet completely indexed. The existing catalogue of the collection is available through the library's website at www.bergen.folkebibl.no. However, users generally have to visit the collection personally to gain access to the documents. In accordance with Grieg's wish for accessibility, information technology is being more extensively used. This will provide everyone with the opportunity to find their own way around the very comprehensive collection.

Our intentions for the Grieg Project are to:

  • Make the complete catalogue and original documents digitally available 

  • Protect the original documents from the wear and tear of frequent use

A secondary objective is to preserve the documents in a digital medium for long-term "eternal" archival storage. This has been/will be achieved as follows:

  • New pages will be added to the library's website in order to give easy and guided access to the collection 

  • The existing library database (bibliographic catalogue) will be extended to comprise the complete Grieg Collection. The search and retrieval facilities will be provided with some additional features, to optimise use 

  • All holograph documents (scores, letters, diaries, notebooks etc.), photographs, drawings and selections of printed documents (like first edition scores, concert programmes) are scanned and stored 

  • Letters and diaries have been word processed, to facilitate full-text search and presentation parallel to the scanned version

  • Other published documents (books, scores, articles, recordings etc.) are made available through the web pages/bibliographic catalogue, and are kept on their existing medium (paper, CD, video etc.). Digitisation might be considered in the future.

 

Methods and Technology

We want to utilize as much as possible of the existing competence, methods and technology already in use at the library to achieve maximum benefit from limited resources. The web pages serve as the easy path to information, provided that users know fairly specifically what they are looking for, such as a particular opus or correspondent. The web pages are designed and updated by the library staff, using the design tool MacroMedia DreamWeaver.

 

FIGURE 1. Illustration of a web-page displaying a list of works by opus number, with links to different document types (scores, manuscripts, recordings)

 

 

The indexing / bibliographic index is based on ISBD- and MARC-format standards, using the "Bibliofil" software from the vendor Biblioteksystemer A/S. Bibliofil provides a user interface for data entry, as well as search and retrieval on both Windows and web platforms. The bibliographic database is the basis for efficient and flexible access to the documents. Each web page entry links to a pre-defined search query that is hidden from the user. The Bibliofil system transfers the search query to the bibliographic database and presents the results to the user. Each document is shown in raster version and text version if present, with a bibliographic summary.

 

 

FIGURE 2. Illustration of a web page displaying the result of a search query: a scanned letter, the same letter in transcribed text version, and bibliographical information on the letter.

 

 

The user is also provided with the option to make open searches, for retrieval of information not available through the (pre-)structured web pages. The trained user will probably find this the most efficient and simple way of retrieval. Searching may be performed both on bibliographic records and on the text documents. For full text the free software ht//Dig is used. Full-text search and bibliographic search are both accessible as an integrated part of the web pages. Document scanning is made with Kofax Ascent Capture with VRS image enhance software and a Ricoh IS330 scanner, supporting formats within A3, colour, grayscale, of black and white, at a maximum of 600 DPI resolution. Even pencil sketches of poor quality can be transformed into remarkably readable digital documents. Grayscale scanning has shown itself to be particularly useful for such documents. Scanned documents are stored in two variants (minimum): 

  • High resolution / high quality for archival and reproduction purposes; i.e. TIFF Multipage CCITT gr 4 (black and white) / grayscale with lossless compression (stored "offline", separate from the public system)

  • Low resolution / sufficient quality for web publishing and local print, i.e. PDF for multipage documents, JPG for photos and single-page documents. 

 

Once scanned, the documents are automatically post-processed to low resolution with lossless compression. The low resolution document file is linked to a bibliographic record in the database, which is the key to retrieval. The bibliographic record may exist before scanning: if not, a new record is entered immediately after scanning. Word-processed documents, produced earlier in Word Perfect, are converted to XML-format, then stored in a separate database for full-text search (ht//Dig). It is our ambition to display scanned pages and text pages to the user in parallel. The realisation of this ambition remains to be seen; we have not yet achieved the technical solution to this challenge.

 

Schedule

The project's Phase 2 started in January 2003, after about ten years' break. Project status at May 2003 is: 

  • Requirement specification prepared and process ongoing with Biblioteksystemer A/S to adjust the Bibliofil system to handle various bibliographical formats (presentations) and digital documents 

  • Some 8,000 scanned pages (produced in 'phase 1') have been converted from SUN-raster to TIFF Multipage, ready to be entered into Bibliofil

  • Scanning of remaining holographic documents (manuscript scores, and so on) has started.

  • Conversion software to change text documents to XML is about to be purchased from Intermedia, a consultancy service at the University of Bergen.

 

We intend to publish the documents continuously as they are entered into the database, once the Bibliofil adjustments are up and running. Expected start-up is late 2003. Our aim is to offer a complete catalogue, with a tailored web user interface and all holographic documents digitally available, by August 2004. If this happens we shall be pleased to present the results of our efforts at the IAML/IASA Congress in Oslo.

 


 

  1. The list is copied from the article "The Grieg Project" by Cecilie Butenschøn, Fontes artis musicae 40 (1993): 128-39.

  2. Further information about Griegiana may be found in Klaus Henning Oelmann , "Griegiana in Bergen (Norwegen)" Fontes artis musicae 38 (1991): 117-22.

 

 

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