“that you approach everything you do with love and passion”. Cataloguing and digitisation of Claudio Abbado's correspondence at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Achim Bonte
• Subject Area: Musicology ; Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 512473891

In 2016, Claudio Abbado's musical legacy was donated to the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz (SBB) by the “Fondazione Claudio Abbado” in Milan. The estate of the world-famous artist thus joins the group of chief conductors of the Berlin Philharmonic, whose estates are kept in the SBB, too: these include Hans von Bülow, Arthur Nikisch and Wilhelm Furtwängler. Claudio Abbado stood in front of the most important orchestras worldwide, advocated for the performance of new music, encouraged young musicians through solo performances, letters of recommendation and by founding top-class youth orchestras. Moreover, he conceived multidisciplinary programmes, founded various festivals and got involved in cultural, social and political topics. He is thus considered one of the most important and multifaceted musicians and personalities of the last decades. His musical legacy contains around 2,000 volumes of music with handwritten entries and 300 accompanying conducting paper notes, almost 450 musicological books, ca. 2,500 audio and video data carriers and around 9,000 documents of professional correspondence. The latter represent an important source of information on musical life, performances and projects, but also on Abbado's cultural-political and social commitment. They comprise plans of rehearsals, concerts, recordings and travels, as well as correspondence with famous contemporary personalities (e.g Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Sofia Gubaidulina, Hans Werner Henze, György Kurtág, György Ligeti, Witold Lutosławski, Luigi Nono, Wolfgang Rihm, Alfred Schnittke, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Leonard Bernstein, Bernard Haitink, Herbert von Karajan, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Georg Solti, Martha Argerich, Swjatoslaw Richter, Mstislav Rostropovič, Rudolf Serkin, Mario Draghi, Giorgio Napolitano, Johannes Rau, Wolfgang Schäuble and Richard von Weizsäcker), letters of recommendation for prospective musicians, statements and opinions by Abbado on a wide range of topics, also outside the musical world, or documents on Abbado's social and ecological commitments (e.g. performance of benefit concerts and public rehearsals for the disadvantaged, promotion of the program to green Milan or the development of bicycle lanes). The Abbado estate has been in demand by numerous users since it was handed down to Berlin and is now the focus of practical and scientific research in music. The aim of this project is to index the complete professional correspondence and to digitise the portion of Claudio Abbado and his main assistant Brigitta Grabner, whose rights have already been granted to the SBB. A protective digitisation of all endangered documents is also contemplated.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)