Beethoven’s hair presentation
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Brief presentation on the lock of Beethoven's Hair owned by The New York Public Library and housed in the Music & Recorded Sound Division.
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Beethoven’s hair presentation
- 1. Beethoven’s hair Bob Kosovsky / bobkosovsky@nypl.org / @kos2 Music & Recorded Sound Division, The New York Public Library November 4, 2021 Presented as part of the Rare Books and Manuscript Section’s “Cool Things We’ve Cataloged” series
- 3. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/24e67ee0-e5e0-0136-9539-013efa3fcaa4 bit.ly/beethovenhair
- 6. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/24e67ee0-e5e0-0136-9539-013efa3fcaa4 bit.ly/beethovenhair
- 9. Beethoven’s death mask Photograph by Karl Gruber / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beethovenhaus_Heiligenstadt_6621.JPG
- 10. “…[at his internment] it was time to hammer Beethoven’s coffin closed and lower it into the earth. He looked very different now, his visage altered utterly because death had claimed him, because of the changes the autopsy had wrought, but also because his head appeared as though it had been assailed by scissors—because so many adoring citizens had snipped keepsake locks of the great Beethoven’s hair.” - Russell Martin, Beethoven’s Hair, p. 177.
- 11. OCLC record # 1078701538
- 12. OCLC record # 1078701538
- 13. OCLC record # 1078701538
- 14. Thank you!
Editor's Notes
- One of the most unusual things I have had to catalog was a lock of hair from Ludwig van Beethoven.
- When not on exhibit (as it is now), the lock of hair is stored in this case (which measures about 4 inches long, and about 2.5 inches high). Open the case, and…
- …you see the hair in a jewel-encrusted, glass-covered container. One of the great advantages of digital images is …
- that one can zoom in closer than one could with natural eyesight. The vertical dimension of that oval case is 2 centimeters or a little less than an inch. Some of you may be familiar with the book, “Beethoven’s Hair” by Russell Martin. It tells the story of how two collectors jointly bid on a lock of Beethoven’s hair that was auctioned by Sotheby’s in 1994.
- Paying $7,300 (after fees), the two collectors split what were about 500 strands, the smaller portion going for biological analysis, and the remaining 437 strands donated to the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies located at San José State University (in California). Martin’s book makes clear that the major story is not so much the hair itself, but the story of its provenance.
- Let’s return to this image. You can see that the jewel-encrusted container sits in a kind of silk bedding. In my over 30 years at the New York Public Library, I had never known anyone to disturb the contents of that case. But when the hair was being prepared for the Library’s current exhibit, conservators wanted to clean the case. All of us were surprised when, at the bottom of the case, the conservators found two folded up documents.
- Here’s one of the documents, written in the older form of German cursive known as Kurrentschrift. I can make out a few words, the most important of which are the names. The 1875 owners are mentioned on the 2nd and 3rd line from the end: Otto Dessoff and Friederike Theile. I’ve not been able to find anything about Theile, but Dessoff was a notable German conductor and composer. Dessoff is the key to the provenance of the hair. His daughter Margarethe Dessoff, emigrated to New York and founded the choral group “The Dessoff Choirs” which is still in existence today. She was also a member of the Beethoven Association, a group devoted to translating the major Beethoven biography of the time and sponsoring chamber music concerts. We assume Magarethe Dessoff donated the hair to the Beethoven Association. When the Association dissolved in 1940, it donated its records and assets (containing many first and early editions of Beethoven) to the New York Public Library. Back to this document, most significantly, the 4th line from the top mentions the painter Josef Danhauser, who is a significant figure in Beethoven iconography.
- Shortly after Beethoven died on March 26, 1827, Danhauser sketched an image of the composer on his death bed. This image was reproduced by lithograph and widely distributed. Additionally, Danhauser, along with his brother Carl and another musician took a cast of Beethoven’s face in order to create his death mask.
- A journal article by Bill Meredith (the retired director of the Beethoven Center), recounted what happened to Beethoven from his final days to his burial three days after his death. One of his sources mentions that Danhauser (and others), after taking a cast of Beethoven’s face, took clippings of his hair. Thus the document accompanying our lock of hair verifies that claim. To add a bit of cultural context, I’d like to read a passage from the previously-mentioned book “Beethoven’s Hair.”
- “…[at his interment] it was time to hammer Beethoven’s coffin closed and lower it into the earth. He looked very different now, his visage altered utterly because death had claimed him, because of the changes the autopsy had wrought, but also because his head appeared as though it had been assailed by scissors—because so many adoring citizens had snipped keepsake locks of the great Beethoven’s hair.” The idea of lots of friends and strangers hovering around Beethoven’s body to snip a lock of his hair, I find frankly disgusting. Yet I’m reminded of the danger of projecting our own mores on those of older times and places. So let me show you what I’ve done.
- Here’s the top portion of my catalog record. Initially I found several catalog records for hair, but most of them lacked the 3xx fields, so I had to search around for those. I’ve added a historical note indicating that many people took clippings of Beethoven’s hair, as well as an ample provenance note. Next are the tracings.
- The challenges in creating subject headings for hair reminded me of the discussions that have gone on, particularly in the music cataloging world. In brief, there’s the question of whether you have an item which is “about” something, or whether that item “is” something. For example, traditionally, when you had a symphony (be it a score or a recording) you assigned a subject heading for “symphonies.” In most cases this is wrong. It’s not “about” a symphony, it IS a symphony, which is better traced by a genre heading. Similarly with hair.
- There is a subject heading for hair, but that means it’s “about” hair. Thus, the more appropriate tracing is the genre term “human hair.” And indeed, once I searched that, I came across over 80 records for human hair. If you ever need a distraction from what you’re doing, I highly recommend doing a genre search on “human hair.” I’ll close with my final close-up…
- Thank you!