Digitisation and Cataloguing of Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut’s Music Collection
Funded by: Stiftung Kulturgut Baden-Württemberg Duration: 2025–2026
Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut not only served as a full professor of Roman law at the University of Heidelberg from 1805 until his death in 1840, he also held the post of the university’s vice-chancellor for several years. Whilst his name remains well known in legal history circles today, particularly due to his pioneering contributions to German civil law, he also made his mark in 19th-century music historiography as the author of the influential treatise on musical aesthetics On the Purity of Music (1825), as the founder of a singing circle known far beyond the city limits of Heidelberg, and finally as the compiler of one of the most extensive and significant private collections of music in Europe, he has also secured a firm place in 19th-century music historiography.
Thibaut’s collection comprised a total of more than a thousand items of music, 415 of which are now held in the library of the Department of Musicology at Heidelberg University. Apart from a few printed items, the collection comprises a large selection of manuscripts of polyphonic sacred and secular vocal music from the 16th to the 19th centuries, as well as Gregorian and Ambrosian choral melodies and a wide-ranging repertoire of church hymns from both denominations. Finally, the so-called ‘National Songs’ comprise an extensive collection of folk melodies from a wide variety of geographical regions.
Funded by the ‘Stiftung Kulturgut’ of the State of Baden-Württemberg, this part of Thibaut’s musical legacy is being transferred to a digital collection by 2026 through a collaboration between the Department of Musicology and Heidelberg University Library, thereby making it accessible to a wide public.