Hudební sbírka Ondřeje Horníka, 1. díl: Sbírka hudebnin, knihovna a výtvarné dokumenty (The Musical Collection of Ondřej Horník, Part I: Musical Manuscripts and Prints, Library, Photographs, and Works of Visual Art)

The composer, pedagogue, church music director, and organist Ondřej Horník (1864–1917) was one of the most important Czech collectors of musical memorabilia around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His extensive collection, comprising items of the most diverse nature but primarily musical manuscripts and prints, a professional music library, and musical instruments, was acquired by the National Museum early in 1918.

The first part of this publication maps Horník’s life and his compositional output, all in the context of happenings in the Prague suburb of Karlín where he lived and worked for many years. The centre of gravity of Horník’s interests as a collector lay above all in sacred music by Czech composers from the late eighteenth century and the nineteenth century. The set of about 15,000 musical manuscripts and prints gives a representative picture of the repertoire performed in churches at that time, especially in central and eastern Bohemia. Another significant part of the collection consists of photographs and works of visual art having to do with music. The publication contributes new findings concerning music in the Czech lands outside Prague, above all in relation to the more than two hundred locations in Bohemia and Moravia from which Horník acquired items in his collection.

From the origin of the collection and Horník’s own inventories thereof, the authors proceed to its further fates. They show how parts of the collection were dispersed in the past into several institutions, and reveal how some sets of materials, e.g. in the ‘Horník Library’, have been ‘attached’ to Horník’s collection erroneously and in reality come from other sources.