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Special Collections

During the course of its life cycle, the FAAM project has explored the knowledge potential hidden behind handwritten and editorial annotations in musical scores within a variety of contexts, ranging from the analysis of Early Music editions to performance indication made by soloists, composers and conductors.

The listed collections may provide new research insights for future projects in musicology and artistic research of the long 19th century.

Belgian music

The research group Labo XIX&XX aims to valorize the rich musical heritage of Belgium through a close collaboration with the Heritage Library of Antwerp Conservatoire. Here follows a list of musicians and organizations which played a prominent role in the FAAM corpus:

Early Music movement

The history of the Early Music movement and its origins is a fascinating subject deserving more research from both academic and artistic disciplines.

FAAM provides an extensive corpus of editions and period compositions, i.e. musical pieces inspired by older traditions of the Renaissance and Baroque. The Missa Romantica andEchos du temps passé projects have risen from this special collection, the first investigating the sacred polyphony of the so-called Cecilian Movement, the latter focusing on the comparative analysis of several editions of Domenico Scarlatti and Johann Sebastian Bach keyboard music.

We have focused our attention to editions with a clear intention as a performing tool, rather than a scholarly product. Controversial editors of Early Music such as Robert Franz and Franz Xaver Witt have been included alongside scholars more in line with modern historically informed practice aesthetics.

List of recurrent musical works

Marginalized repertoire

Canonic composers

Classical composers

Early Music composers

Salon music

The realm of amateur and domestic music making is also a neglected field of investigation. In the last decades, more academic and artistic attention has been dedicated to salon music, played outside the great theatres and concert halls 1.

Chamber music arrangements and adaptations for keyboard four hands and other domestic settings provide additional insights on the performance practice of the time, because the editor had to provide additional guidance to their amateur consumers.

Music periodicals are also playing a crucial role in the understanding of domestic performance practice, especially by female players. Here is a list of interesting series:

Fellow researcher Pauline Lebbe has started a new artistic research project on the topic called Echoes of Home, focusing on Belgian salon music.

Orchestral music

The FAAM corpus contains several orchestral scores by famous conductors, such as Mahler pioneer Maurice Abravanel, but also music that testify the performance of Belgian ensembles, such as the annotated Haydn symphony by Ghent conservatory dean Karel Miry or the Liszt piano concerto performed by Hélène Dinsard.

Concert programmes

Alongside handwritten annotations, information recorded in concert booklets and exam programmes have played a marginal role in musicology and artistic research. We have collected a series of concert programmes from the Royal Conservatoires of Ghent (1835-1878) and Antwerp (1899-1912) reconstructing the intricate networks of artistic legacy between students and teachers, and analysing the evolution of repertoire in music education. Furthermore, the concert booklets of the Royal Society for Zoology Antwerp (1896-1905) provides us with a detailed overview of the activity of one of Antwerp's most important orchestra, under the baton of Edward Keurvels.

Annotation types

Music notation is one of the most complex languages ever designed by human beings. It is no surprise to state that the classification and understanding of annotations has been a challenge not yet fully solved 2.

According to the type of annotations arising from the corpus, we have constructed a simple annotation ontology, mostly based on Wikidata entities.

Here is a list of interesting annotation types, that have occurred extensively through the FAAM corpus.

Music pedagogy

Annotations in music treatises and methods are also valuable sources of information for the understanding of long 19th century performance practice. We have mostly focused on vocal pedagogy, thanks to the kind collaboration of Daniel Shigo.

  1. November, Nancy. 2023. The Age of Musical Arrangements in Europe: 1780–1830. Elements in Music and Musicians 1750–1850. Cambridge University Press. ↩

  2. Cohen-Shalit, Nir. 2025. “The Romantic Conductor-Scholar.” In Performing by the Book? Musical Negotiations between Text and Act. Orpheus Institute Series. Leuven University Press. ↩