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On Jon’s Desk: Forkel’s Allgemeine Litteratur der Musik crosses paths with Harry Potter

29 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by Jonathan Bingham in On Jon's Desk

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1792, alchemy, Allgemeine Litteratur der Musik, Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, J. K. Rowling, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, Jonathan Bingham, Leipzig, Nicolas Flamel, Philosopher's Stone, Schwickert

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I knew it! I knew it! ”
“Are we allowed to speak yet?” said Ron grumpily. Hermione ignored him.
“Nicolas Flamel,” she whispered dramatically, “is the only known maker of the Philosopher’s Stone!”
This didn’t have quite the effect she’d expected.
“The what?” said Harry and Ron.
“Oh, honestly, don’t you two read? Look — read that, there.”

― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone


Allgemeine Litteratur der Musik; oder, Anleitung zur kenntniss musikalischer bu̇cher, welche von den ȧltesten bis auf die neusten zeiten…

Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749 – 1818)

Leipzig: Schwickert, 1792

First edition

ML105 F72


It seems to me that a person either loves the Harry Potter series or hates it. Some people even refuse to read it despite the pleas of HP lovers close to them. As we fanatical fans know because our hearts tell us it is so, the abstainers would love it too if they would just finally read it. But for those of us who aren’t able to convince the last hold outs of our generation, at least we can experience the magic of sharing J. K. Rowling’s world with the children we are raising as they become old enough to join the Harry Potter fan club. It is in this light, that of needing to be the expert of all things Harry Potter in order to guide my nine year old son as he reads the series this summer, that I contemplate a recent important discovery.

I remember when I first entered the world of Harry Potter. It was the summer after my first year of college and I was looking for my summer fiction fix, an annual college ritual created by restricting myself from fiction during the school year in an effort to achieve better grades. In May 2003, as classes were ending, the release of the fifth book in the Harry Potter series (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) was eagerly anticipated the next month (June). I had been hearing about the series for a couple of years and it was finally time to take the plunge. And I dove deep. I read the first four books in the series at a pace of about a book a week and was ready for the fifth installment of the series when it was released in June. Needless to say I, like so many millions of others, was hooked on HP from then on. I have to admit to having read the series in its entirety several times in the years since I joined the club.

And strangely, at no point in any of those readings did it occur to me that a certain important character in the first book (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) is an actual historical figure. Every time I read about Professor Dumbledore’s association with Nicolas Flamel I assumed J. K. Rowling had created Flamel as a fictitious character. It wasn’t until this week and a chance encounter with Allgemeine Litteratur der Musik while conducting research on a separate topic that I discovered how all these years I had been missing something.

But let me back up and provide a little context. The plot of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone [spoiler alert] follows Harry Potter, a young wizard who discovers his magical heritage on his eleventh birthday, when he receives a letter of acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry makes close friends and a few enemies during his first year at the school. With the help of his friends Ron and Hermione, Harry faces an attempted comeback by the dark wizard Lord Voldemort, who killed Harry’s parents, but failed to kill Harry when he was just 15 months old.

During his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry the successful enterprise of preventing his nemesis’ return hinges on Hermione’s deductive reasoning in deducing what Professor Quirrell is after, and Professor Dumbledore is hiding, within the school. This artifact, the Philosopher’s Stone, is the creation of the alchemist Nicolas Flamel – an associate of Professor Dumbledore. And this is where Rowling’s fiction intersects with historical fact.

Nicolas Flamel (1340 – 1418) was a successful French scribe and manuscript seller. After his death, Flamel developed a reputation as an alchemist. Lore has it that he discovered the Philosopher’s Stone and achieved immortality. These legendary accounts first appeared in the 17th century. I had no idea that Nicolas Flamel was an actual person until I found him, completely by coincidence, in Forkel’s Allgemeine Litteratur der Musik (1792).

Johann Nikolaus Forkel was a German musician, musicologist, and music theorist. The son of a cobbler, he received early musical training (especially in keyboard playing) from Johann Heinrich Schulthesius, who was the local Kantor. In other aspects of his music education he was self-taught, especially in regards to theory. As a teenager he served as a singer in Lüneburg. He studied law for two years at the University of Göttingen, and then remained associated with the University for more than fifty years. There he held varied positions, including instructor of music theory, organist, keyboard teacher, and eventually director of all music at the university. Forkel is often regarded as the founder of Historical Musicology because through his vision the study of music history and theory became an academic discipline with rigorous standards of scholarship. He was an enthusiastic admirer of Johann Sebastian Bach, whose music he did much to popularize. He also wrote the first biography of Bach (in 1802), which is of particular value today due to his decision to correspond directly with Bach’s sons Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (thereby obtaining valuable information that would otherwise have been lost). Forkel’s Allgemeine Litteratur der Musik (Dictionary of Musical Literature) is a survey of musical texts arranged by author’s last name in alphabetical order, with dictionary-style entries.

On page eleven is an entry for Nicolas Flamel. Loosely translated from the German, in part it reads, “A French poet, painter, philosopher, and mathematician in Paris at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, born in Pontoise … He was especially known for alchemy…” Forkel’s description includes the texts written by Flamel (easily distinguished in this work because the Latin titles were printed in a Roman typeface rather than the Gothic) which relate in some way to music. He provides references to important passages in regards to music within Flamel’s texts as well.

In addition to being able to share this new insight with my nine year old son as he reads Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, this experience has led me to conclude two things: there is more depth to the Harry Potter series than some people want to give it credit for and more importantly, the rare books collections are an incredible source of knowledge and insight. Irreplaceable is how I would describe them, actually. It wasn’t through the internet that I found out that a character in one of my favorite books is actually a historical figure. Rather, like Hermione with the information that allowed Harry to defeat Lord Voldemort and stop his return, I found it in an old book in the library.

~ Contributed by Jon Bingham, Rare Books Curator

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On Jon’s Desk: Contemplating Passover with A Book of Songs and Poems from the Old Testament and the Apocrypha, published by Ashendene Press

30 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by Jonathan Bingham in On Jon's Desk

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1904, A Book of Songs and Poems from the Old Testament and Apocrypha, Chelsea, Cicely Hornby, Emery Walker, England, Haggadah, Jon Bingham, Jonathan Bingham, Kelmscott Press, Ken Tomkinson, Matzah, Passover, Ptolemy Typeface, Seder, St John Hornby, Subiaco Typeface, Sydney Cockerell, The Ashendene Press, William Hooper, William Morris

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Then on that day David delivered first this Psalm to thanke the Lord into the hand of Asaph and his brethren: give thankes unto the Lord, call upon his name, Make known his deeds among the people. Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him. Talke you of all his wonderous works…”

~ The Psalm of Thanksgiving of David

A Book of Songs and Poems from the Old Testament and the Apocrypha

Chelsea, England: Ashendene Press, 1904

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Passover is an eight day Judeo festival celebrated in the spring, from the 15th through the 22nd of the Hebrew month of Nissan (March 30th – April 7th, 2018). Commemorating the emancipation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt, Passover is observed by avoiding leaven and is highlighted by the Seder meals that include four cups of wine, eating matzah and bitter herbs, and retelling the story of the Exodus. In Hebrew it is known as Pesach (which means “to pass over”) because God passed over Jewish homes when killing the Egyptian firstborn on the very first Passover eve. Passover is divided into two parts: The first two days and last two days (the latter commemorating the splitting of the Red Sea) are full-fledged holidays on which candles are lit at night and kiddush and sumptuous holiday meals are enjoyed. Those observing the holiday don’t go to work, drive, write, or switch on or off electric devices. The middle four days are called Chol Hamoed, semi-festive “intermediate days,” when most forms of work are permitted.

To commemorate the unleavened bread that the Israelites ate when they left Egypt, chametz (leaven, or food mixed with leaven) is not eaten (or even retained in the observant’s possession) from midday of the day before Passover until the conclusion of the holiday. Instead of chametz, matzah (flat unleavened bread) is eaten. It is a mitzvah (religious duty or commandment) to partake of matzah on the two Seder nights. The highlight of Passover is the Seder, observed on each of the first two nights of the holiday. The Seder is a fifteen-step, family-oriented and ritualistic meal. In addition to the partaking of the four cups of wine, matzah, and bitter herbs, another focal point of the Seder includes the recitation of the Haggadah, a liturgy that describes in detail the story of the Exodus from Egypt. The Haggadah is the fulfillment of the biblical obligation to recount the story of the Exodus on the night of Passover.

While not part of Passover observance per se, it may be nice to take a look at this beautiful collection of Old Testament songs and poems, printed by the Ashendene Press in 1904. Operated in Chelsea (an area in southwest London), England from 1895 to 1915 and then again from 1920 – 1935, the Ashendene Press was a small, private press founded by Charles Harold St. John Hornby (1867 – 1946). Naturally, St John Hornby was aided in the running of the press by his wife Cicely (daughter of Charles Barclay, a director of the National Provincial Bank, and Charlotte Cassandra Cherry) whom he married on 19 January 1898. In 1900, Hornby met Emery Walker and Sydney Cockerell (then William Morris’ secretary at the Kelmscott Press). Together, they encouraged and instructed Hornby and helped in devising two typefaces for his own use, Subiaco and Ptolemy.

Most Ashendene editions used one of these two typefaces, which were specially cast for the Press. Subiaco was based on a fifteenth-century Italian type cast by Sweynheim and Pannartz in Subiaco, Italy. The Ptolemy typeface was originally created by the Ulm based printer Lienhart Holle in 1482 for the work Cosmographia, a cartographic work by Claudius Ptolemaeus. Hornby, Walker, and Cockerel wanted to recreate a typeface with a character equal parts Gothic and Roman (“Gotico-Antiqua”) and they re-created the Ptolemy typeface for that reason.

Some Ashendene books were illustrated with wood-engravings, but the majority were printed solely using type. The wood engraver William Harcourt Hooper worked for Ashendene Press starting in 1896, after working at Kelmscott Press from 1891 to that time (during which he had contributed to works such as the Kelmscott Chaucer). It is reported that Hornby called Hooper “almost the last of the old school of wood-engravers and a very fine craftsman.”

A Book of Songs and Poems from the Old Testament and the Apocrypha is a wonderfully produced, sixty-two page book printed in an edition of 175 copies (150 on paper and 25 on vellum). The text is printed in black and red, with initial capitals in blue by Graily Hewitt, on Batchelor’s “Hammer and Anvil” paper. This octavo book (19 x 13 cm or 7½ x 5¼ inches) contains eleven selections. Eight of these from the Old Testament and three from the Apocrypha, which are biblical or related writings not forming part of the accepted canon of Scripture. The Biblical Apocrypha is a set of texts included in the Latin Vulgate and Septuagint but not in the Hebrew Bible. Of the eight selections from the Old Testament, one is from Exodus, two from Deuteronomy, one from Judges, three from Samuel (one Samuel I and two Samuel II), and one from Chronicles I.

Rare Books copy contains unattached, but laid in, bookplate of “Ken Tomkinson, High Habberley House, Kidderminster Worcs [Worcestershire], England.” While we don’t know much about Ken Tomkinson, author of Kidderminster Since 1800 (1975) and Characters of Kidderminster (1977), we can at least surmise that he possessed excellent taste in books since he owned this one.

A Book of Songs and Poems from the Old Testament and the Apocrypha is a fantastic addition to the University of Utah’s amazing Rare Books collections – and somewhat miraculously, perhaps, it came just in time for Passover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~ Contributed by Jon Bingham, Rare Books Curator

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