Digitisation of unique and rare examples of printed editions from the music library of the Benedictine monastery in Engelberg

Thursday, June 12, 2025

The music library of the Benedictine monastery in Engelberg (CH-EN) includes music sources mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries, after the fire that destroyed the complex in 1729, in use in the monastery itself and in the abbey school (Stiftsschule). Besides manuscripts by Benedictine composers, the library also contains numerous printed works. About twenty of these are unique copies, not preserved in any other institution worldwide. As part of the digitisation projects of RISM Switzerland Digital Music Unica in Switzerland and Disjecta membra, seventeen unique copies of printed music and four prints of which no complete set of partbooks is known have now been made accessible online. The digitised sources include, among others, late 18th-century Lieder by Franz Ludwig Bauerschmidt and Johann Gottlieb Ulrich. Of particular interest for local history are works of the Lucerne composers Franz Joseph Leonti Meyer von Schauensee and Joseph Franz Xaver Dominik Stalder.