On the Trail of a Knight of Santiago: Collecting Music and Mapping Knowledge in Renaissance Europe

Abstract

The 2011 discovery that the substantial collection of sixteenth-century printed partbooks preserved in Madrid’s Real Conservatorio Superior de Música originally belonged to an Austrian diplomat, Wolfgang Rumpf, has opened up new perspectives on the formation of early modern music libraries. Employed by the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, Rumpf was also an informant of Philip II of Spain, who rewarded him with induction into the chivalric Order of Santiago. The Order, headquartered at Uclés, received the bulk of Rumpf’s music library after his death. This article uses Rumpf’s library, and the catalogue he commissioned from the Imperial Librarian Hugo Blotius, to shed light on the music book’s place in early modern material culture, and music’s place in an expanding world of knowledge. Rumpf’s partbooks were not, in the first instance, intended for performance; they reflect instead his assiduous efforts to assemble a ‘universal library’ in which music books formed an integral part.