Moving on from Handwritten (almost, but not quite)

I’m sure many Library visitors will miss the richness, beauty and textures of the manuscripts they saw in Handwritten. I, for one, will greatly miss the privilege of seeing works by Mozart, Bach, Michelangelo and Galileo on a regular basis.

In this post, I want to offer some consolation, not just to myself, by exploring some of the links between the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin’s manuscripts in Handwritten and the National Library of Australia’s collections. All you need is a reader’s card and a means of getting here.

The Library’s entire collection is vast at over 10 million items. It holds the published correspondence of many names in Handwritten including Descartes, Voltaire and Dickens, relevant secondary research and facsimile and early printed scores of most of the music. Of greatest interest, when considering links to Handwritten, are some rare first editions and works of art.

Many people know the Library’s collection is very rich in material relating to Cook’s three Pacific voyages (1768-1779), highlights from which are exhibited in the Library’s Treasures Gallery. Johann Reinhold Forster’s journal, one volume of which was included in Handwritten, captures Forster’s experiences on the second voyage (1772-1775), and complements the Library’s chalk portraits of people encountered by William Hodges, official draughtsman on that voyage. Two portraits are currently on display in the Treasures Gallery.

William Hodges, Portrait of a Maori Chieftain, October 1773

Isaac Newton’s Handwritten letter to a diplomat has a counterpart in a 17th-century book once owned by Newton. He has signed his name inside the front cover. The Library has the rare 1813 Russian account of Krusenstern’s voyage around the world (1803-1806), which Tilesius von Tilenau accompanied as artist and naturalist. It also has a first edition of Johannes Kepler’s Rudolphine tables, work for which Kepler requested payment in his Handwritten letter.

Frontispiece to Kepler’s Rudolphine tables, 1627-1630 (detail)

The Library also has strong collections of material relating to the Dunera Boys, the c.2500 mostly Austrian and German men and boys interned and sent to Australia from Britain in 1940. We drew on these for an exhibition in 2010. These items relate to the short story in Handwritten by Dunera Boy Walter Kaufmann. Further, the Library has a watercolour by artist and adventurer Jacques Arago to whom Louis Braille wrote his Handwritten letter, pictured below. This is an Australian bird  encountered on Arago’s voyage with Freycinet on the Uranie (1817-1820).

Louis Braille’s letter to Jacques Arago, 3 May 1840 (Courtesy of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preussischer-Kulturbesitz)

Yet perhaps the Library’s collection with some echo of the manuscripts of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin benefactor, the industrial chemist Ludwig Darmstaedter, is that of Edward Augustus Petherick whose staggering collection includes letters by some of the greatest names in history. Within it are letters by Roald Amundsen, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Florence Nightingale, Mark Twain, the Duke of Wellington and William Wordsworth to name but a few. And there’s much more in store …

Susannah Helman
Assistant Curator
Exhibitions Branch

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Making a simple illuminated letter

On 19 February, Gemma Black led a workshop on illuminated manuscripts taking inspiration from books in Handwritten. Based in Hobart, Gemma is an internationally-distinguished calligrapher, Churchill Fellow, and Honoured Fellow of the prestigious Calligraphy & Lettering Arts Society, United Kingdom. For over two decades she has taught techniques at home and overseas, and presented at conferences internationally. Her work hangs in many private and public collections including the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK. In 2008, her hand-produced copy of the Apology Manuscript delivered by Prime Minister Rudd in the federal Parliament on 13 February, 2008 was placed on display at Parliament House, Canberra.

Gemma Black demonstrating illuminated lettering

Gemma’s specialty, ‘illuminations’, originally referred to the decoration of books with gold or silver. Today the term is used to refer to any illustration or decoration in a manuscript. Illuminated manuscripts could often take years to make. One of the most famous illuminated manuscripts in the world is the Book of Kells, and you can view facsimiles of some of its pages at www.nla.gov.au/nla.gen-vn1898732-1

The NLA workshop provided an introduction to techniques associated with medieval illumination using contemporary materials. Students were provided with a sample letter (the first letter of their name) based on lettering by Owen Jones, an English master of illumination in the reign of Queen Victoria.

After matching suitable colours on a swatch, participants spent the day tracing letters, then adding filigrees and moats. Then came the illustration: laying down the gild (modern tacky gum and gilding mix), the gold leaf (using gilding powders and transfer gold) and after this had dried, painting with gouaches. Two or three colours were used for the letters, and lastly white was added as a highlight. This is roughly the same order in which a medieval manuscripts was illustrated, though of course with different materials, surfaces or tools.

A range of options for ‘illumination’ exist nowadays including aluminium leaf, schlag metal, alloys and gold leaf mixed with gum arabic. And for a much less precious look, metallic designer gouaches are excellent for quick illuminations and come in quite a range of surfaces including bronze, pale gold, gold, copper and silver, which would suit a beginner exploring this artform.

Workshop participants with their letters

The participants in Gemma’s class left quite chuffed with the results of their painstaking fine handiwork, and gained a real appreciation of the time it would have taken to produce all those exquisite pages in the medieval and renaissance manuscript books displayed in the exhibition Handwritten. Many participants suggested we try a bookbinding workshop next, so stay tuned for our next hands-on workshops.

Brendan Dahl
Manager, Education

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The Handwritten Ensemble

For musicians, the Handwritten exhibition offered a rare, and treasured, opportunity; to see fifteen of the most celebrated pieces in the Western canon – pieces we have spent our lives performing, studying and listening to with such great pleasure – in front of us in the composer’s own hand.

You can imagine my delight then, when I was approached to create an ensemble and curate a series of concerts to coincide with the exhibition. The intention was to present audiences with the unique opportunity of hearing these works performed before seeing them on display in the composer’s hand. Where possible then, the programs would be comprised of works in the exhibition. However, of the fifteen pieces displayed in Handwritten, ten of them were composed for very large ensemble, such as full orchestra or choir, and logistically impossible to present.

By adopting a more creative and less literal approach to the program certain solutions presented themselves. Thanks to the 19th -century tradition of ‘piano reduction,’ (the practice of arranging large scores for one Piano was popular before the advent of recording, enabling amateur enthusiasts to play their favourite Symphonies and Concerti) several options became available. The eventual result was four programs, each approximately one hour long, containing eight of the fifteen works on display, as well as a number of significant compositions with strong links to the content of Handwritten.

Jack Hobbs, cello

The first program was for Clarinet, Cello and Piano (with Tiffany Lick, Jack Hobbs and Lucus Allerton) and consisted of Beethoven’s piano trio, op.11, Weber’s 1st Clarinet Concerto, op.73 and Brahms’ Clarinet trio, op.114.

The second program of string quartets (with Hayley Bullock, Ewan Foster, Ben Carvahlo and Jack Hobbs) contained Haydn’s ‘Sunrise’ quartet, op.76, no.4, and Mendelssohn’s 3rd quartet, op.44, no.1.

Handwritten ensemble No. 2

The third program was a ticketed event that presented the vocal music in the exhibition. Karen Fitz-Gibbon (soprano) and Ella Luthasaari (piano) presented Handwritten in Song, performing songs and arias by Mozart, Bach, Hensel, Schubert, Haydn, Schumann and Mahler.

The final program took what was for many the highlight of the exhibition, sketch material for Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in C minor, op.67, and presented it as a four hand (two pianists, one piano) reduction arranged by one of Beethoven’s contemporaries, Wilhelm Meves. This arrangement (performed by Anthony Smith and Adam Cook) highlighted the extreme and blatant virtuosity inherent in performing Beethoven’s works.      

In these four programs there were three major works presented that were not in the exhibition. Haydn’s ‘Sunrise’ quartet was eventually chosen, not just for its enduring popularity and beauty, but for the fact that it was composed during the summer of 1796, the same summer Haydn completed the Missa Sancti Bernardi de Offida. A similar series of links were behind Schumann’s song cycle Frauenliebe und leben being presented in Handwritten in song. Schumann’s 3rd Symphony was on display, as was a letter and illustration by Adelbert von Chamisso, who was also the author of the poetry Schumann used. The third, Brahms’ Clarinet trio, seemed to justify itself as one of the truly great pieces of chamber music, and its ability to be placed alongside Weber’s Clarinet Concerto.

On behalf of the Handwritten ensemble, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the National Library of Australia for creating this wonderful and enlightening experience, and to our audiences for attending in such extraordinary numbers.

Samuel Smith,
Handwritten Ensemble Director

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Handwritten closes

When Handwritten closed at midnight last night – we extended opening hours for the last weekend – 73,000 visitors had passed through the Exhibition Gallery. This is a wonderful result and makes this the third most popular show ever at the National Library coming just after National Treasures (our second most visited exhibition) and after Treasures from the world’s great libraries (when we opened the doors almost 24 hours a day to accommodate over 100,000 people). An average of nearly 640 people per day saw Handwritten and commented very positively saying things like:

“A very moving exhibition – words fail to describe the awe I feel. Thank you with all my heart for bringing this to Canberra”

“Marvellous – an inspiration for humanity”

“One chance in a million to see these treasures. Thank you for all the painstaking work. A wonderful opportunity”

“Almost unbelievable – it is going to take me a while to fully process what I have just seen and reflect on its significance”

“A pure delight! Magnificent”

And we have many, many pages of similar comments from people all over Australia who specially came to see Handwritten or who commented through this special exhibition blog.

At 5pm yesterday the last copy of the exhibition catalogue was sold which points to an amazing piece of forecasting (or good luck!) as we printed 5,000 copies – which sold steadily from day one.   The book will remain a wonderful window into the exhibition content and the riches of the Staatsbibliothek for centuries to come.

The Handwritten catalogue was a sell out!

Media interest in the exhibition since day one has been amazing and the reviews very positive and thoughtful for an exhibition which did take a certain amount of diligence from the visitor to read and to digest what was being said, written in different languages and in wildly varying hands from the minuscule Marx to the wild Bolivar and the indecipherable Bismarck to the never satisfied Schopenhauer and Beethoven.  The media coverage was extensive – from articles in the Qantas inflight magazine to feature pieces in The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald newspapers. The exhibition was also covered in The Australian Financial Review, The Saturday Age, Australian Art Review, The Daily Telegraph, The Canberra Times, The West Australian and in regional newspapers Australia-wide. It was also covered in international publications, ranging from the Heathrow Airport magazine in London to the Philippines Star newspaper.

Handwritten also received widespread TV and radio coverage, including on ABC TV News in most capital cities, ABC News 24, Channel Nine and WIN TV and on most ABC radio stations from Darwin to Hobart as well as a one-hour special on ABC Radio National’s The Music Show and special German programs on SBS TV and radio. Interviews and news reports were also featured on 2UE and 2GB  radio stations in Sydney which were syndicated Australia-wide.

There was significant radio coverage in Canberra, with regular stories and interviews on 666 ABC Radio as well as on all the Canberra commercial radio stations.  The exhibition also featured prominently in social media and via websites such as Yahoo7 and NineMSN.

I must also mention the amazing events program running over the exhibition period. Numerous lectures and very widely appreciated concerts featuring music from the exhibition, were programmed along with films and talks culminating in the Enlighten Festival evening program. The Education program for kids was also well attended. We calculate that over 5,000 visitors took part in the program as part of Handwritten and no doubt will remember the exhibition very fondly via these inspiring and popular events – even a silent disco in the foyer!

A silent disco amongst a forest of Hesse inspired trees.

I would like to particularly thank our remarkable colleagues at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin for their great support for this landmark library exhibition which shows, not just their extraordinary collection, but their great willingness to share it with the world. I thank the indefatigable collector Ludwig Darmstaedter who amassed his vast collection and donated it to the Staatsbibliothek in 1907. This generous act inspired my colleague Dr Gabriele Kaiser and others at the Staatsbibliothek to develop an exhibition referred to at the very beginning of this blog.  Handwritten grew out of this 2008 project and the strength of friendships established over the past decade between those in Berlin and here at the NLA.  I also heartily thank all my NLA colleagues who have made this exhibition a reality. It has been a huge effort but one that I’m sure they are all delighted to have been a part of.

Packing of the exhibition has begun

Looking into the Exhibition Gallery with the pack up now in full swing I am beginning to miss the manuscripts already.

Nat Williams
Director, Exhibitions

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Handwritten in the news – part 2

Given the breadth of individual human achievement represented in Handwritten, it’s no surprise that every day there is a new discovery or event related to the authors whose manuscripts feature in the exhibition.

Just last month several letters by Albert Einstein to an American-German group canvassing his thoughts on pre-war tensions in 1930s Germany were auctioned in Los Angeles.  The typewritten letters, hand-signed “A. Einstein,” were written just three months before the outbreak of World War II and fetched almost twice the pre-sale estimate by the auction house.

On the 14th of March, the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize, an annual prize for significant advances in medical research was awarded to Peter Walker of the University of California for his discoveries in cell biology. The prize was established in 1952, and awards 100,000 euro to the winner. Correspondence between Ehrlich and his patron and supporter, can be seen amongst the many letters collected by Darmstaedter on display in the central section of Handwritten.

Ludwig Darmstaedter, collector and patron. Image courtesy of Dr Bollert.

Last week, the oldest surviving film featuring a Charles Dickens character was discovered, in the year of the 200th anniversary of the Charles Dickens’ birth. The Death of Poor Joe dates to March 1901 and was discovered by British Film Institute (BFI) curator Bryony Dixon, in February 2012. Prior to this discovery, the earliest known Dickens film was Scrooge or Marley’s Ghost, released in November 1901. The film, which is just one minute long, depicts Joe, the street sweeper from Dickens’ Bleak House, dying in the freezing snow against a churchyard wall. As he falls to the ground a local watchman tries to help him and cradles him as he dies. The footage, filmed in Brighton, was directed by George Albert Smith, and handed to the BFI in 1954 by a collector who had known Smith. It is thought the director’s wife, Laura Bayley, played Joe, and a Tom Green played the watchman. More information is available here http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-09/dickens-film-found-in-uk/3879500

In case you weren’t aware of Charles Dickens’ Australian connections, he had always wanted to travel to Australia on a speaking tour. He eventually encouraged two of his sons to migrate to Australia. His youngest son Ed Dickens owned a station at Wilcannia, served in the NSW Parliament and worked as a Land inspector in Moree NSW where he died childless and in debt.  His gravestone still stands today in the Moree cemetary.

Grave of Charles Dickens youngest son Ed Bulwer Lytton Dickens Moree [picture] / Fiona Brand. Date 1994.

Grave of Charles Dickens youngest son Ed Bulwer Lytton Dickens, Moree, NSW by Fiona Brand 1994.

Brendan Dahl
Manager, Education

 

 

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Handwritten at the movies

There is only one week left of the Handwritten exhibition, it will close to the public on Sunday 18 March.  If you are like me and don’t want your fabulous exhibition experience to fade, you might consider some of the multitude of cinematic depictions of the authors in the exhibition.  They range from the terribly serious to the slightly silly and with all the rain we’ve had recently its perfect weather for curling up on the couch to watch some films.

If you are a classical music fan then there is possibly no better place to start than with the Academy Award winning Amadeus, a largely fictional account of the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his rivalry with Austrian court composer Antonio Salieri.   It was filmed in Vienna in many of the original locations and with a score that is almost entirely by Mozart, it is a must see.  If Beethoven is more your style you could watch Immortal Beloved with Gary Oldman but also seek out the often overlooked Copying Beethoven with Ed Harris –it’s interesting to note that Sir Anthony Hopkins was the first choice to play the composer in both of these films.

The last house Mozart lived in, Vienna

Sigmund Freud is another figure who has been depicted in many movies and in many strange ways, in The Seven Percent Solution, Sherlock Holmes visits Freud to cure him of his delusions and in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Freud (and Napoleon) are kidnapped and transported through time to help with a high school science project.  On a more serious note, keep a look out for A Dangerous Method, which chronicles the relationship between Jung and Freud in the development of psychoanalysis, it is due to be released in cinemas in Australia at the end of this month.

Sigmund Freud has co-starred with Sherlock Holmes and Bill & Ted!

There are simply too many movies to mention so I hope that you will add your favourites too.  Grab the popcorn and dim the lights……

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Handwritten and Enlighten

As part of the Canberra Festival, the Library is participating in ENLIGHTEN, a magical program of events on the 2,3,9,&10 March. Activities will include spectacular lighting projections and entry to Handwritten and the Treasures Gallery until 11 pm. See the ENLIGHTEN website for further information and a complete program of events.

This Saturday, 3 March, the Handwritten Ensemble will play in the foyer and at 7.30pm we will show a film screening of Death in Venice (1971, 130mins, PG). Dr Roger Hillman, German and Film Studies, Australian National University will introduce the film.

More information on ENLIGHTEN events can be found on our website.

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Handwritten in the news

Recently a number of news items have highlighted that many of the manuscripts and people in Handwritten still have relevance today.

While defending Australian Wikileaks founder Julian Assange against extradition to Sweden his lawyers quoted from the Codex Iustinianus.  Originally written in 376 AD by the Roman Emperor Justinian, the codex was one of the founding treatises of the European legal system. The beautifully illuminated version that features in Handwritten was made in France and dates from the mid 1200’s.  Quoting directly from the original text, Assange’s counsel told the United Kingdom Supreme Court – “We decree by general law that no one ought to be his own judge or to administer justice in his own cause. For it is very unjust to give somebody permission to pass judgment in his own cause.” You can read more online in The Age.

Justinian's Codex was recently used in the Julian Assange case

Handwritten also features a plea from astronomer Johannes Kepler to the military commander Albrecht von Wallenstein about an outstanding fee that Emperor Ferdinand II had promised him for developing the Rudolphine Tables in 1627. Containing new calculations of the planetary orbits, the tables were the realisation of 30 years of work following on from his development of the three laws of planetary motion between 1605 and 1618. Kepler died en route to lobby for his claim to be resolved but his work lives on today.  The current NASA Kepler missions use his original laws to find Earth-sized planets orbiting around stars across the universe.  NASA provide more details on their website

Kepler's laws of planetary motion are still being used by NASA

Another astounding recent discovery was the voice of German Chancellor Otto van Bismarck on wax cylinder phonograph recordings made in 1889 by an assistant to Thomas Edison.  Although cylinders were found in 1957, the contents were unknown until last year when a curator at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park used a new device called an Archeophone to convert the cylinders into audio.  The recordings include the German Chancellor displaying his remarkable language skills reciting songs and poems in French, German, Latin and English including the French National anthem, La Marseillaise -  a somewhat bizarre choice after his defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870- 1871.  After you have visited Handwritten to see Bismarck’s personal correspondence, you can hear his voice on the National Parks Service Website.

The Edison Phonograph

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Junior Music Makers

For many visitors to Handwritten over the past few months, the exhibition’s music manuscript section has been a highlight. We had expected that interest in this section would not just be confined to the adults, and so organised a school holiday activity for 7-12 year olds based on it. Music Makers was presented twice during January to around 30 enthusiastic kids. The workshop drew on themes in Handwritten, looking at the history of written music, and processes involved in producing musical notation.

The history of written music has much in common with the history of the written word. Like words, music was around as an oral tradition much, much earlier than its recording in manuscript. As with the written word, religious purposes were one of the early calls for the process of notating music. An example of early musical notation we looked at in Music Makers was the prayer book Missale Plenum (Full Missal) which depicts chanted or sung prayers in Neumatic notation, a system used prior to the invention of the five-line staff.

The Missale Plenum depicts prayers in neumatic notation

The styles of notation present in Handwritten’s music section differ greatly between their composers just as the styles of handwriting do in the rest of the exhibition. The idea of different ways of writing music down included discussion of systems of non-standard notation, like this very cool representation of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. This created an opportunity for kids to examine unusual visual representations of music from the Library’s collection and create their own graphic scores.

Also, there was plenty of time devoted to playing and listening to music by composers represented in the show. Taking the familiar melody of ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ based on French folk tune ‘Ah vous dirai-je, maman’, we listened to theme and variation studies by both Mozart and Haydn, and made up our own variations on keyboards and glockenspiels.

Kids viewing the music manuscripts in Handwritten

Sadly, activities for budding musicians at the Library are over for now, but there are still sessions over the next few weeks for calligraphers both young and not so young. Details for sessions on Sunday 19 February and on Sunday 26 February are available from the Library’s events pages.

Ben Pratten
Education Officer

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Thinking about Medieval manuscripts

Professor Margaret Manion, the renowned, Melbourne-based international scholar of the art of the medieval manuscript joined us last Thursday evening and gave a wonderfully knowledgeable and entertaining lecture about the remarkable group of medieval manuscripts in Handwritten.

Margaret Manion speaking at the Library for Handwritten at night

Professor Manion spoke very interestingly about the comparisons that could be drawn between the manuscripts in Handwritten and those in a variety of Australian collections, including the State Library of Victoria and the University of Melbourne. While Australia is not blessed with a great number of significant medieval manuscripts (they are mainly held in Melbourne) there were enough for Professor Manion to illuminate for us in her engaging illustrated talk.

What struck me was how strong the design sense was in even the smallest manuscript in the Handwritten collection. Even though I had handled these manuscripts in Berlin I had not seen the individual pages from the Staatsbibliothek’s items blown up larger than catalogue page size, so her lecture was a revelation at this level alone.  A tiny prayer book or Book of Hours from Northern France or Flanders from the mid 15th century is quite difficult to view in the exhibition because of its size. It is only 9 centimetres tall and clearly meant to be held in one’s hands and studied closely!  When seen blown up to the size of the large screen in our theatre it was impressive and the minuscule details on the page were quite amazing when seen on such an enhanced scale.

This tiny 15th century prayer book or Book of Hours is only 9cm tall

The artists who conceived these works had a remarkable ability to elaborate the page and the words of the bible or of prayers and to create almost unbelievable detail and richness – all unattributed. The anonymity of these artists, even the enormous skill of the hand behind the Von Firmian Book of Hours is testament to their selfless method of production and the glorification of the Christian texts.

The detailed binding of von Firmian's Book of Hours

Seeing key images from Handwritten alongside manuscripts held in our region was a special treat.  Personally, to see the Boethius De Musica manuscript from the National Library of New Zealand and the Glorious Antiphonal from the State Library of South Australia again, when they were last here in Treasures from the world’s great libraries exhibition ten years ago, was a highlight of the lecture. It also points to the generosity of Australian libraries (not to mention the Staatsbibliothek) in lending such important items for exhibitions.

When Professor Manion visited the Library’s Treasures Gallery, Susannah, one of the exhibition curators, and I had the opportunity to show her our beautiful Flemish Book of Hours c.1450 from the Clifford Collection which of course she knows well – it is exhibited in the NLA to Z section under V is for Vellum. Susannah and I shared a very interesting discussion about vellum with Professor Manion and she related how a colleague of hers, a conservator, is so skilled that not only can she identify what animal the vellum comes from but what part of the animal and how many different animals might have contributed to one illuminated manuscript volume. Look for the vellum in the Paris Bible in Handwritten which is exquisitely fine and even today, almost 800 years later, with all the advances in technology people cannot produce vellum as fine!

The vellum in the Paris Bible is incredibly fine

It is wonderful that exhibitions like Handwritten or Treasures provide the very valuable opportunity to share knowledge about some of the key items in our distributed library and archival collections.

Professor Manion’s excellent lecture is now available from the Library’s podcast page.

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