Music library of the collegiate church of Beromünster

Thanks to the financial support of the Albert Koechlin foundation (Albert Koechlin Stiftung) in Lucerne, the music sources of St. Michael in Beromünster were comprehensively catalogued during the years 2004, 2005 and 2006 by the RISM Switzerland. By the end of the cataloguing, 823 music manuscripts from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, 1,087 printed music books from the 17th and 18th centuries, and 3,656 printed editions from the 19th century had been made accessible for musicological research and musical performance. During the inventory process the entire collection was rearranged, shelf-marked and repacked in acid-free materials for conservation.

The collegiate church of St. Michael in Beromünster is in possession of an extensive collection of musical sources in the form of autographs, manuscripts and printed editions. Its music library is one of the most important collections of central Switzerland. This music library shares the fate of the libraries of the Benedictine monasteries of Einsiedeln, Engelberg and St. Andreas in Sarnen: their treasures - collected with a religiously-motivated approach to art - are returning to the awareness of musicological science and musical performance at an extremely slow pace. Manuscripts of the 19th century are most prominent in this collection of liturgical music: they show impressively the extent to which music of the 17th and 18th centuries was continuously cultivated by several "regens chori" in the daily life of the canons of St. Michael late into the 19th century. The fact that St. Michael in Beromünster is the only active community of canon fathers in the German-speaking part of Switzerland having a library of its own, underlines the importance of this collection.

Contact

The collection may be visited and used only after previous enquiry. For enquiries please contact:

Chorherr Jakob Bernet
Stiftsbibliothekar
Stift 35
CH-6215 Beromünster
Tel: +41 (0) 41 930 32 77
e-mail: bibliothek@stiftberomuenster.ch