Austrian Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt's Archive Launched Online

Seven decades of material, including annotated scores, correspondence, and notes, has been digitized and is freely available to the public

The Nikolaus Harnoncourt Center (NHZ), which is based at the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz, Austria, has recently launched an online archive covering all seven decades of Nikolaus Harnoncourt's life. Harnoncourt's family opted to donate many of his personal effects to the university for this purpose, following his death in 2016.

Among the treasures of the archive is Harnoncourt's collection of annotated scores, which includes works by Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Bruckner, Strauss, Offenbach, Verdi, Dvořák, Brahms, Schumann, and Bartók — as well as many Baroque composers, some of whom he helped to bring back into the public eye, like Biber, Schmelzer, and Muffat.

The archive also contains books from his musical reference library, secondary literature (programs, reviews, sketches, correspondence, repertoire lists, performance lists, conducting notes, concepts, thoughts, teaching material, rehearsal plans, lectures, interviews, photos, indexes), and audio-visual material (all commercial recordings in all formats, radio and TV programs, interviews, lectures, unpublished concert and rehearsal recordings).

Titled Nikipedia, the archive comprises a searchable database, and users can also explore the material by browsing through several different categories.

The founder of Concentus Musicus Wien, Harnoncourt was a renowned conductor and one of the leading figures of the early music movement. A researcher and collector of ancient instruments, he also taught performance practice and the study of historical instruments at the Mozarteum University of Music and Dramatic Arts in Salzburg.

You can browse the Harnoncourt archives here.

(PC: Marco Borggreve)