Castello del Buonconsiglio monumenti e collezioni provinciali

Heritage

The Buonconsiglio Castle library and the provincial Monuments and Collections date back to 1920, soon after the establishment of the governmental Monuments and Fine Arts Service in Trento. The library was taken over at a local level in 1974, when responsibility for the care of historic and artistic property passed from the State to the Autonomous Province of Trento.

The library currently boasts 13,427 volumes and 256 Italian and foreign periodicals (88 of which are still in subscription, whilst the remaining 168 are no longer published). The collection is made up of materials regarding mediaeval and modern art, with special reference to the local territories of Trentino and Northern Italy.

The library also boasts the valuable presence of six of the seven musical codices from Trentino, from the Chapter of the Cathedral of Trento, considered to be one of the most precious and important sources for the knowledge and study of music from the first half of the XV century. This work is made up of c.2,000 sheets containing 1,864 mainly sacred polyphonic compositions, reminder of the aesthetic sensitivity of over eighty composers of the time, from G.Dufay to the Franco-Flemish, and from the Italians to the English.

The Feininger collection and the collection from Giuseppe Gerola’s library, also make important contributions to the Buonconsiglio library.

Feininger’s Music Library, left by the priest and musicologist Laurence Feininger (1909-1976), is the result of a lifelong dedication to classical music. The collection consists of 120 codices (21 of which are incunabula); 1,116 printed works (239 from the 16th century); c.2,000 manuscripts of 18th century polyphonic music; three original Offertory collections by the composer G.Giorgi; a hand-written manuscript of organ music from the 18th century; 1,352 reels of microfilm (from which c.300,000 prints have been made).

The library of Giuseppe Gerola (1877-1938), first Head of the Fine Arts Service to whom Trentino owes its numerous works of art recovered from the Austrians, acquired many works for the Fine Arts Service in the period from 1966 to 1967. Approximately 3,000 works ranging from booklets to periodicals, shed light on Gerola’s interests, which were not limited to the artistic field, but extended to the fields of history, iconography, archaeology, numismatics, languages and toponymy. The collection, despite not having important repertories on the artistic history, possesses the major part of Trentino’s bibliography published in Italian and foreign articles from the mid nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. It is therefore possible to find articles that have been published not only in Trento, but also in Innsbruck, Vienna, Leipzig, Cologne, London and Paris.