Das Musikarchiv des Stiftes Vorau. Die Handschriften (18.‒20. Jh.)

The musical archives of the Vorau Monastery include approximately 1,500 printed and 1,500 handwritten pieces of music from the 18th through 20th centuries. The newly consolidated holdings contain church music that was used in the monastery's chapel as well as in some of the neighbouring parish churches. They also contain chamber music from the estates of monastery members, including original works or arrangements for one to five instruments. Two thematic catalogues from 1771 and about 1820/30, which offered the regens chori (choirmaster) the needed survey of the selection of music, testify to the discarding of works not longer used. According to an inventory from the middle of the 19th century, no musical material has been discarded since that time. In the course of arranging this new catalogue, the collections that had been kept separately – only a small part of them known to musicologists – have been newly systematized in the monastery archives.