The Schøyen Collection is one of the most extensive private collections ever assembled, its scope and depth of material on a par with, or indeed surpassing, many major national holdings. Begun in the 1920s by M. O. Schøyen ( 1896-1962 ), father of Martin Schøyen, it originally comprised some 1000 volumes of Norwegian and international literature, history, travel, science, and antiquities.

Martin Schøyen’s first additions to his father’s collection were in ancient coins, antiquities, and early printing. Comparisons have been drawn with the formidable collections of the great 19^th-century British antiquary and ‘vello-maniac’ Sir Thomas Phillipps: from those early beginnings, Martin Schøyen went on to mirror Phillipps’ bibliomania with the same diligence and devotion, expanding the collection to encompass the largest and most comprehensive group of manuscripts consciously assembled to represent the history of the written word, the Schøyen Palaeographic, but also important codices, incunables, cuneiform tablets, world literature, and music.

No auction has ever before attempted to tell the history of music over almost 1200 years of human civilization: from the development of early medieval notation in Carolingian Europe (splendidly exemplified here by the earliest notated Office of St Rémy, and one of the earliest instances of European musical notation, lot 1) to musical manuscripts, scores, drafts and composers’ letters of the Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern periods. There are examples of Messine, Aquitanian, Cistercian, St Gall, Tuscan and Beneventan neumes, and manuscripts of Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi, Wagner and Tchaikovsky. The music offered for sale here reflects the vast scope of the Schøyen Collection.

Spreading and deepening knowledge of his collections has always been one of Dr Schøyen’s objectives: both in employing researchers to catalogue his holdings and in making them available to any serious scholar or interested party. Part of his collection is universally accessible via his website and to date 43 printed scholarly catalogues of entire sections have been published in the Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection series (MSC).