The Origins of the Music Collections in the University of Toronto Library: A Tale of Two Scores

The Library of the Faculty of Music, University of Toronto, holds two copies of the twenty-four-page vocal score of Nœnia, a setting by Hermann Goetz for chorus and orchestra of Friedrich Schiller's poem "Nänie" in an English version by the Reverend J. Troutbeck, M.A. The work was published in London about 1879 by Novello, Ewer & Company in its Original Octavo Edition series. One copy retains its pale peach original back wrapper with publisher's advertising; neither front wrapper survives. The paper has aged fairly well, though one copy shows signs of heavier use, with loose and damaged brittle pages. Both were given board covers in the late 1940s. A more distinctive characteristic is that they are the only copies reported to be held in Canada; the only other known copy in North America, acquired comparatively recently, is at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.

Goetz was a German-Swiss composer who completed this work in 1874, two years before his death from tuberculosis at age thirty-six. His biographer in the New Grove second edition sums up his career in this way: "His music reveals an extraordinary melodic gift, formal mastery and an expert command of his craft as well as a distinctive style. . . . That his works have not achieved a place in the repertory. . . is to be regretted." ¹ At the time, however, Novello probably had a modest success with the publication of Nœnia, for six performances in the next few years by amateur or semiprofessional choirs in southern England were reviewed in the Musical Times. ²

The First Score

At least one copy crossed the Atlantic to be sold in a music shop in the Dominion of Canada, and eventually to be deposited at the University of Toronto. Its title page ( fig. 1) has the stamps of I. Suckling & Sons, 107 Yonge St., Toronto, a music dealer in business up to 1894, and the initials of the original owner, "F.H.T." Frederick Herbert Torrington was one of the larger-than-life, multitalented professionals whose activities characterized musical Toronto in the late nineteenth century. Born in Birmingham, England, in 1837, he had moved to Canada in 1856, and worked in Montreal and Boston before settling in Toronto in 1873. He was an organist, violinist, and orchestral and choral conductor. ³ The portrait (fig. 2) that hangs in a rehearsal hall of the Faculty of Music building is nearly four meters high, presenting a graphic statement of his significance in the community. From 1873 to 1894 he conducted the Toronto Philharmonic Society, and in the mid-1880s also the Hamilton Philharmonic Society—two large choral groups with assisting instrumentalists. The repertoire of oratorios and cantatas imitated that of Victorian England, emphasizing Mendelssohn and Handel, with the occasional performance of works by Bennett or Stanford, Haydn or Gounod. Torrington preserved the Goetz score in his collection, but there is no evidence he ever conducted it.

The score perhaps came to the library soon after Torrington purchased it in the early 1890s, and probably it was housed in the Toronto College of Music which he had founded in 1888—a shelf of scores would have enhanced the dignity of the director's office. The college was the first of three competing musical affiliates of the University of Toronto—schools that prepared candidates for their university examinations. In 1918, a year after Torrington's death, the Toronto College of Music amalgamated with the Canadian Academy of Music, and in 1924 the academy was absorbed by the Toronto Conservatory of Music. ⁴ The Toronto Conservatory of Music then gained the assets of both its rivals, including over one hundred vocal and orchestral scores initialed by "F.H.T." The University had taken over the ownership and operation of the conservatory by 1921, and was thus de facto...