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On five occasions in Pauline literature, the author claims to write in their own hand. In three of the five instances, the autograph is reserved for the final greeting and the greeting alone. In Galatians 6.11 and Philemon 19, however, Paul writes more than the letter's greeting in his own hand, as the comment about his autograph appears well before the closing salutations. This article engages one of these texts, Philemon, and argues that it was written entirely in Paul's hand. The letter was a Pauline holograph. To make this argument, the article first assesses the 'cheirographic rhetoric' of Philemon 19. Paul alludes to a type of documentary writing, the cheirograph, that recorded various sorts of financial proceedings. Paul's autographic guarantee recalls validation statements that were integral to this genre of text. Comparanda from the non-literary papyri show that when an author of a cheirograph called specific attention to their own handwriting, the entire document was customarily written in their own hand. The article then turns to the personal nature of Philemon and the abundance of second-person singular forms, arguing that there was a strong preference that personal letters like Philemon be handwritten in Paul's context. Taken together, these two arguments demonstrate that Paul's short letter to Philemon was more likely to be handwritten than dictated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During his lifetime, the founder of Opus Dei made two changes to his names: he united the first two into one —Josemaría— and added the toponymic “de Balaguer” to his first surname. This study analyzes the reasons for these changes and the ways in which the founder himself expressed his name.

There are many studies on technology-supported learning based on cooperative learning in the literature. However, little is known about Autograph-assisted think pair share learning in supporting students' problem-solving abilities for learning in today's technological era. This study aims to examine and analyze the differences in the improvement of students' problem-solving abilities who participate in think pair share learning assisted by Autograph (Auto-TPS) and conventional learning assisted by Autograph (Auto-CL). This study uses quantitative methods with the design used in this study is a nonequivalent control group design involving two groups of students. The sample of this study was 70 students of class IX SMP Al Ulum Medan, Indonesia. Questions to test students' mathematical problem-solving skills found five items. Data analysis includes data processing of test results, namely normality test, homogeneity test, hypothesis testing, and average difference test in the two groups using t-test. The conclusion of this study is that students who study with Auto-TPS get a higher increase in problem-solving abilities compared to students who learn with Auto-CL, with the explanation that the group of students who study Auto-TPS is very good when compared to the group student learning Auto-CL. Research findings related to the application of Auto-TPS can be an alternative learning model in the current technology-era learning situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is devoted to the history of the poem “Spring Fun” (“Veshnee vesel’e”), which is an incomplete transcription of the first song from the poem of the Lithuanian poet Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714–1780) “The Seasons” (“Metai”), made by Vyach. Ivanov. The translation was made for the unpublished “Collection of Lithuanian Literature” (prepared at the “Parus” publishing house in 1915–1917), edited by Y. Baltrushaitis and M. Gorky. At the same time, Baltrushaitis acted as an editor-compiler and translator of a collection of Lithuanian folklore for M. and S. Sabashnikov’s publishing house. This project was also not implemented. The correspondence between Vyach. Ivanov, Y. Baltrushaitis and M. Sabashnikov allows to reconstruct the history of translation of the poem. The article provides information about the first publications of separate fragments of the translation (by J. Jasinyavicius in 1963 and T. Venclova in 1978), based on unauthorized typewriting from the Department of Manuscripts of the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore (Vilnius). The appendix presents Ivanov’s translation according to an autograph from the Manuscript Department of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The work is mainly based on archival materials from St. Petersburg, Moscow, Rome, Vilnius.

The article is the first to examine the textual peculiarities of the manuscripts of Leo Tolstoy’s short story “Three Elders,” published in 1886 in two different editions. The study of the autograph, two copies and proofreading of the story allows to get the notion of all stages of the author’s work as well as creating the pattern of alterations which appeared due to both unintentional mistakes and deliberate interference in the text from copyist V.G. Chertkov, who edited a new publication of the short story “Three Elders” in magazine “Niva” (1886, no. 13). The author of the article compares the two first printed texts of “Three Elders” and proves the choice as the main source the text published by S.A. Tolstaya in the edition: Count L.N. Tolstoy’s Works. Part 12. Late Works. M., 1886. The short story “Three Elders” was included into vol. 13 of The Complete Works of L.N. Tolstoy in 100 vols.

The article examines in detail the correspondence between L.N. Tolstoy and A.I. Herzen by analysis of all publications, in which this correspondence appeared, clarification of the errors that were made when commenting on the letters, and search for a new interpretation of some places of Tolstoy’s and Herzen’s epistolary heritage. The author of the article finds the true name of the French revolutionary chemist Tessier du Motay, who was a close friend of Herzen and was with him in London during Tolstoy’s stay there. The article offers several options for reading the final phrase of Tolstoy’s last letter addressed to a London emigrant, and provides a number of arguments refuting the previous reading. The author of the article proves that the correspondence between Tolstoy and Herzen to this day has a number of “difficult” places, commenting on which can give new information not only about their personal and literary relationships, but also about the realities of that time, the circle of communication between the two thinkers and the historical and social context in which the correspondents were immersed.

The recently discovered V.V. Mayakovsky’s notebook with an autographed fragment of the poem “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin” is being published for the first time. This is approximately half of the first part and the whole second part of the poem, which restores the complete draft manuscript of the work with variants to the printed text, rhyme gaps and lines that were not included in it. The text is recorded in the form of a dynamic transcription. The introductory article preceding the publication deals with the place of Mayakovsky’s notebooks in the poet’s creative heritage, textual work on them and a new stage of their study, including the publication of notebooks in the Complete Collection of Mayakovsky’s works, which is currently being prepared at the A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It has also been proven that the text of the poem contained in this notebook can be placed between the texts of notebooks no. 23 and no. 24 pertaining to the same period and currently kept in V.V. Mayakovsky State Museum collection. Comparing these notebooks that contain the autographs of the first and the third parts of the poem, this paper analyses characteristic features of the poet’s creative work, confirms the authenticity of the published notebook, and substantiates its dating. In addition, the article presents the history of this notebook, which was gifted by Mayakovsky to the children’s writer N. Kalma in 1924.

The current article examines autograph manuscripts of three little-known Sufi doctrinal works of the eighteenth-century Central Asian Sufi, Ṭāhir Īshān, a native of Khwarazm. Ṭāhir Īshān is better known as the author of the eighteenth-century Naqshbandī hagiographical compendium Tadhkira-yi Ṭāhir Īshān , which was completed in 1160/1747. The works in question, entitled Ḥujjat al-sālikīn va rāḥat al-ṭālibīn , Rumūz al-kalām , and Risāla-yi sayr ilā Llāh , survived in their autograph copies in a single manuscript codex preserved at the Beruni Institute of Oriental Studies in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), under the inventory number of MS 5121. Given that the Rumūz al-kalām and Risāla-yi sayr ilā Llāh only survived in their autograph copies, MS 5121 serves as a crucial gateway to these doctrinal texts of Ṭāhir Īshān. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A detailed analysis of four concordant movements, taken from five autograph sonatas for violin and basso continuo by Johann Georg Pisendel, allows us to identify some compositional and reworking methods of the German musician. The alternative versions recorded in these manuscripts seem to derive frequently from performing and improvisatory practice.

This article traces the cultural history of a portrait format popularised through the global expansion of lithographic printing. This format combined a traditional portrait vignette with a lithographic facsimile of the sitter's signature. Such 'facsimile-autographed' portraits evoked the notion that sitters had physically signed their own likenesses – testifying not only to the veracity of the depiction, but displaying an indexical trace of embodied agency. The article argues that this format afforded a particularly cogent way to conceptualise and communicate ideas about selfhood and society in liberal, romantic, and nationalist political programmes. Such lithographic portraits did not simply 'encode' or 'reflect' these new ideas, however, but were part of a technological revolution that decentralised the production of mass media and thereby reshaped the societies in which such novel ideas flourished. By connecting the various expressions of public selfhood found in facsimile-autographed portraits to the way lithography expanded audiences and reshaped modes of conceptualising public and private life over the course of the nineteenth century, this article argues that established scholarly concepts like the 'romantic self' or 'liberal self' might be reconsidered through a new, technomaterial heuristic: the 'lithographic self'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We do not possess, nor are we ever likely to possess, any autograph of a Greek or Latin literary text from antiquity. We do not always apprise our students of this fact. This article seeks to explain why we possess only copies of the texts, often adapted for one reason or another and at many stages removed from the autographs. It also explains why certain kinds of originals cannot by their nature be copied or adapted, and are lost to us as soon as they are created. Non-literary texts too, written on durable materials other than papyri and parchment, do not, for various reasons, always constitute autographs, or autographs that we and our students can have ready access to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The publication is a reproduction of twenty book inscripts by Yu.M. Lotman from the library of B.F. Egorov. These inscriptions on books, magazines and reprints of articles form a kind of dialogical form, definitely reminiscent of epistolary communication. The published inscripts are valuable evidence of comradely and collegiate communication between two remarkable scientists, who were connected by decades of productive cooperation. The first inscript is dated 1952, and the last one discovered is 1992. For the first time, the article presents the reproduction of Lotman’s drawing, which depicts the entire family of the scientist. The inscriptions are often built on a language game, they are playful and spontaneous, but still the basis of dedicatory inscriptions are those in which the enduring importance of friendship, collegiality and morality is emphasized. The scripts are printed from autographs kept in B.F. Egorov’s home library in St. Petersburg.

The essay examines the characteristics of a copy of Pascoli's poem Iugurtha, printed in Amsterdam in 1897, and belonging to Luigi Majno, socialist politician from Milan: the copy witnesses an autograph correction by Pascoli in v. 34, which solves a metric-prosodic problem documented from the earliest manuscript drafts.

In m. 23 of Chopin's Prelude in E Minor, op. 28, no. 4, the music comes to a halt on what is spelled as a dominant 4/2 chord. Yet the Bb in the bass "resolves" upwards across the ensuing silence, prolonged by a fermata, to B in m. 24. This silence embodies a "negative action"-a gesture defined by an underlying intention not to carry out a premeditated act. Its notation calls upon the agency of the performer to subvert an implied harmony at the last possible moment. This enigmatic moment has its roots in a close relationship between the E-Minor and the A-Minor Prelude (op. 28. no. 2), as revealed by a sketch-leaf that holds the keys for deciphering Chopin's enigmatic spelling and recalls the troubled personal circumstances in the days surrounding the production of the sketch-leaf in Majorca. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study is devoted to the publication of Vyacheslav Ivanov’s Russian translation for Lithuanian folk songs, made for unpublished collection of Lithuanian literature (“Sbornik litovskoj literatury,” Petrograd, [1915–1917]; ed. by Iu. Baltrushaitis, M. Gorky). Around the same time, Baltrushaitis was the editor-compiler and translator of the collection of Lithuanian folklore at the publishing house of M. Sabashnikov. This project was also not implemented. Ivanov’s work on Lithuanian translations is chronologically close to his participation in other collections of national literatures. In an extensive introductory article, the author reconsctucts the history of the creation of translations from Lithuanian, using the correspondence of V. Ivanov, Y. Baltrushaitis, M. Sabashnikov. The research shows that Ivanov’s work on translations for the Lithuanian collection stretched from the beginning of 1916 to the summer months, when the poet’s family lived in a village near Sochi. The preamble also contains information about the first publication of an incomplete collection of these translations, made in 1973 by Yu. Tumyalis using unauthorized typescript from the Manuscript Department of the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore (Vilnius). In this publication, the texts of Ivanov’s translations are given by autographs from the Manuscript Department of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkinskiy Dom) of RAS and the Roman Archive of Vyach. Ivanov. The textual comments describe the currently available sources of Ivanov’s translations, such as correspondence of Iu. Baltrushaitis, epistolary materials of others, Ivanov’s preparatory materials, manuscripts, translations from the archival storages of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Rome, Vilnius.

Research objective and materials: This article is devoted to the analysis of the results of the work carried out on the sources used by Vladimir Tiesenhausen in the compiling the Arabic volume of the “Collection of Materials Relating to the History of the Golden Horde”. Results and novelty of the research: A comparative study of texts extracted by Vladimir G. Tiesenhausen in 1884, with their new editions, presented the following picture: one group of publications represents academic editions with quality translations, accompanied by professionally executed commentaries. Another part of the sources was published based on one part of existing copies. As practice shows, sometimes the older and complete copies of published works remained out of coverage in such publications; their existing editions are not taken into account. The third group of sources is composed of works that remain in manuscript form to the present day. One such work – “al-‘Aylam al-zakhir fi akhbar al-awa’il wa-l-awakhir” by Mustafa ibn Hasan al-Janabi – exists in numerous copies. Searches and the discovery of its copies in Turkish funds show such source studies’ problems as incomplete cataloging of manuscript collections, unprofessional descriptions by compilers of some catalogues, inconsistency in the provided titles of the works and the names of their authors. The autograph (Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Yeni Cami, no. 831) and two full texts (Köprülü Kütüphanesi, Fazıl Ahmet Paşa, nos. 1031, 1032) are of great value in the publication of “al-‘Aylam al-zakhir”. The result is the formation of a creative portrait for the author of a published work and the creation of a complete image for his work on the basis of its copies. This may ensure against potential errors.

Felicjan Faleński’s unpublished, first completed drama, Smutne dzieje powstania w Dalekarlii [The Sad Story of the Uprising in Dalecarlia] from 1867, corresponds to Victor Hugo’s program, whereby a work of dramatic art should be “the past revived for the present”. Written with a fresh memory of the January Uprising of 1863, Faleński’s text tells about the rebellion of the Swedes against Danish domination in the union of Scandinavian states established by the Kalmar Union at the end of the 14th century. The play depicts the abuses of the Danes and King Eric of Pomerania, the rebellion of Swedish nobility and the popular masses led by a simple miner, the overthrow of the king, the betrayal of one of the feudal lords, the coup d’état, and the assassination. The action is arranged according to the historical mechanisms known from Shakespeare’s chronicles; in presenting the monarch’s fate, Faleński adds the Calderonian element of the rule of divine providence over the world of earthly history.

The article discusses the changes introduced by the successive editors of Adam Mickiewicz's narrative poem to the text version published by the poet himself. The most important one is undoubtedly the addition of the poem considered the "epilogue" to Pan Tadeusz, allegedly lost by Mickiewicz. No less radical are the interventions consisting in supplementing the text with fragments from the autograph or with the poet's later additions made to the already printed text, as well as in corrective conjectures in instances regarded by the publisher as slips of the pen. The article compares the surviving authorial versions of the text, demonstrating that Mickiewicz himself treated his work as a continual process and tested new solutions on various occasions; however, there is no evidence that he intended to introduce them into the printed text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The poetry of the greatest Ragusan humanist poet, Ilija Crijević (Aelius Lampridius Cervinus, 1463-1520), has been published in print only recently. This might prompt the conclusion that there was no particular interest in his oeuvre in the past. The survival of the voluminous autographs of Crijević in the Vatican Library seems to have resulted in the scholarly neglect of the manuscript tradition of his works that developed in his native city from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. This manuscript tradition is studied in this essay with the aim of showing that for several centuries Crijević's works were not only copied but that the text was also critically edited. Particular attention will be devoted to the labors of Ivan Marija Matijašević (1714-1791), who pioneered the systematic research on Crijević's texts, as well as to those of Antun Agić (1753-1830), who prepared a manuscript edition of his poetry. Once identified and connected, Agić's scattered manuscript papers provide an invaluable guide to the history of the reception of Crijević's texts in Dubrovnik and beyond. The essay also identifies the hitherto unknown autograph letter Crijević sent to Prince Ferdinand of Naples and establishes that the manuscript dedicated to Paolo Orsini is similarly the poet's autograph. The result of the research underpinning the essay is the list at its end, providing the most complete account so far of the surviving manuscripts of Crijević's works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is an introduction to the issues of Adam Naruszewicz’s editorial techniques, revealed in the preserved autographs of his literary prose and scientific works. These manuscripts are divided into texts written by Naruszewicz and those dictated and edited by him. Initial research shows that the bishop's editorial work was done in line with the following criteria: clarity and credibility of the argument, substantive correctness, and shaping the content, the aim of which was to create a positive image of the king, Stanisław August. This often determined intervening in areas, which are difficult to be accused of being incorrect today. This is why the article attempts to indicate those editorial activities of the bishop, which could now be perceived as variants of the text, while, according to the author, they required amending. As an editor, Naruszewicz interfered with various aspects: factual errors, style, structure, punctuation, making clarifying additions, as well as self-censoring. All these editorial efforts show the literary skills of one of the most outstanding minds of Polish Enlightenment.

Recently (2019/20), a new autograph written by Immanuel Kant in October 1786 was found and identified. It is a quotation from Horace's Epistles I. 1, 60 dedicated to Johann Friedrich Lange (1760–1826), a preacher and former student of Kant's at the Albertina University: "Let this be a man's brazen wall (rule of life), to be conscious of no ill, to turn pale with no guilt." Kant quoted the passage several times; one time in his MS. Horace was one of Kant's favorite Latin poets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study is devoted to the history of creation of Russian translation “Molitva” of Latvian poet Aspazija (the name Elza Pliekšāne, 1865–1943). V. Ivanov made this translation for a collection of Latvian literature (“Sbornik latyshskoj literatury”, Petrograd, 1916; ed. by V. Bryusov, M. Gorky). The study was conducted with the involvement of all the surviving materials: correspondence of Bryusov and Ivanov, epistolary materials of others, Ivanov’s preparatory materials, manuscripts, translations from the archival storages of St. Petersburg, Moscow.

Under the supervision of N.V. Sinicyna, the first and second volumes of the academic series of the collected works of Maxim the Greek were published in 2008 and 2014 respectively. The publication of these two volumes was the first step of a grandiose project, which promises to be a major event in Slavic studies. If the project is finished, the prospect of which has become less definitive after Sinicyna’s death in 2018, the series would conclude the preliminary stage in the evaluation of the writings of Maxim the Greek, and at the same time, open up new perspectives in the study of his writings. The author of the article, hoping that such an important undertaking will not stop at the second volume, offers a plan for completing the series. Some wishes are also expressed regarding additions to the already published volumes. In particular, it is absolutely necessary to include certain texts missing in the first volumes (translations and compilations among others) as well as commentary to the texts already published. Afterwards the publication of the series has to be continued. In order to face the problems that will arise in the process of preparing the next volumes, the author recommends to make use of the experience accumulated by Russian philologists. Indeed, they have published at a high academic level, multivolume series of complete collected works of each of the most prominent Russian writers. The questions that arise with the publication of every academic series of the kind includes the identification of autographs (if they are preserved), the attribution of the compositions, the selection of the main version for each of them, a critical analysis of its drafts and of the variants relevant for publication, the models of the historical, literary and real commentaries, the selection of a bibliography, and the required indices. In the case of Maxim the Greek, the publisher should take into account his extraordinary biography as far as it is reflected in his works, his encyclopedic erudition, the extensive manuscript tradition of his works, and different strata of manuscript evidence. If the work is completed according to the proposed plan, the collected works by Maxim the Greek might become a model for similar publications of other Old Russian writers.

This article examines the poetic and scribal activities of the sixteenth-century poet and scribe William Forrest. Forrest’s works survive in a number of manuscripts that he prepared himself, some for presentation to specific individuals, some for less definable purposes. The article assesses his achievements as a scribe and manuscript producer over several decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay concerns an unusual note of Kant’s that has been available in Hamburg since the 1920s but otherwise neglected in the Kant literature. This small 8 x 6.3 cm sheet belonged to the manuscript collector Oskar Ulex (1852—1934), who appears to have bought it from a dealer in France. Writing covers both sides of the sheet, with moral theology discussed on one side, and the cosmological proof on the other. A transcription and description of the sheet is provided, followedby a “Question & Answer” with the goal of dating the notes describing the two separate arguments for the existence of God. The use of the expressions ‘Moraltheologie’ (moral theology) and ‘Endzweck’ (final purpose), as well as the discussion of ‘an object of the moral will’ — all of which touchupon a central point of Kant’s developing moral philosophy — show that the text on both sides of the sheet could not have been written before the last third of the 1780s. Finally, it will be shown that the term ‘moraltheologie’, and the positive connection between moral philosophy and theologycontained in it, is a relatively late innovation in the Kantian corpus. A central reflection bearing on this point, R 4582 (AA, XVII, S. 601), will also be used to clarify several features of Erich Adickes’s methodology in preparing the Nachlaß volumes of the Kant-Ausgabe published by the former Prussian Academy of Sciences.

The present paper concerns an unpublished autograph by Leopardi belonging to the Neapolitan Papers (XII.7). It contains a list of classic authors, each followed by a series of numbers. As the references to the 1549 Basilea edition show, the list is a study and an index of the 'Anthologion' by Johannes Stobæus, interrupted at the Sermo IX. Such study can be dated, for both internal and external reasons, to the last months of 1825. It is a witness of the working method adopted by the poet from Recanati who, by connecting each reading to the origin of a new work, proceeds by successive selections, up to the final composition. In this case, the objective - that was never reached, although tracks are recognizable - was to publish an index and translation of the Bizantine author. The autograph is therefore an evidence that helps understanding the criteria of the choices made.

Article in German, Abstracts in English and German.The paper deals with a letter from Alexander von Humboldt, which has been part of Lion Feuchtwanger's Autograph Collection since 1958. An investigation of the contents of the letter brought to light new details, chiefly of Humboldt's activities in promoting young talents. Emil Naumann (1827-1888), composer, teacher and author, was clearly identified as the letter's recipient.

Annabella Dyve (1676-1728), a maid of honour to Princess Anne and later the wife of Sir Robert Howard, is known to have been a pupil of Purcell but has otherwise remained a somewhat shadowy figure. A series of letters to Sarah Churchill, Lady Marlborough, preserved in the Blenheim papers in the British Library, alongside a satirical account of her marriage in Delarivier Manley's The new Atalantis (1709), reveals a range of details about her life and personality, the former source showing that the 'Bell Barr' title given to two works by Purcell refers to her summer retreat in Hertfordshire. In the light of the letters from Howard to Churchill, the literary text of the 'Bell Barr' song I love and I must potentially takes on a private meaning relating to the 'particular friendship' between the two women, while the possible ownership and purpose of the Gresham autograph songbook, its unique source, requires some re-evaluation. The title 'Bell Barr' itself arguably encodes a complex meaning available only to those privy to possibly compromising personal information, and Howard's correspondence suggests that other late songs by Purcell may also share this feature. The difficult relationship between Queen Mary and Princess Anne, with its possible implications for Purcell, is also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents findings from work on a catalogue of the compositions of Otakar Ostrčil (1879-1935), and focuses on autograph musical sources deposited in the Music History Division of the Czech Museum of Music. This institution is the main repository of sources for research concerning Ostrčil's life and work, because it has succeeded in acquiring most of his preserved autograph scores and also holds the extensive papers of the Otakar Ostrčil Society, containing besides materials pertaining to the business of the Society itself also many sources for the composer's works including autographs, especially sketches. However, by contrast with other Czech composers such as Dvořák, Smetana, Fibich, Novák, Suk, and Nedbal, so far Ostrčil lacks a separate inventory in the museum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The article describes the recent discovery by Noah Gardiner of the holograph fair copy of the third volume of al-Maqrīzī's Khitat ('description of Egypt') in the Library of Michigan University (Michigan Islamic MS 605). It is the only known Maqrīzī holograph in the Americas. The manuscript was copied well after 818 A.H. (1415) and was finished shortly after 831 A.H. (1427), when the author may have written his last additions in it. A full codicological description of the manuscript is given. The place of the manuscript in the Maqrizian corpus is determined. Its provenance is traced to one of the collections of Abraham Shalom Yahuda (d. 1951). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1996 the Czech Museum of Music has been working on an internal project titled Exploration of Sources for the History of Czech Melodrama, responding to a growing wave of interest in this genre and the need to map its development by creating an annotated list of musical materials. Registered in the data base of Czech melodramas are 729 titles. The physical holdings of the Czech Museum of Music include many autograph manuscripts of melodramas deposited in collections from the estates of their composers. Among such collections that have been systematically catalogued, the most important for melodrama are from the estates of ZdenĚk Fibich (S 80), Karel KovaPovic (S 115), and Josef Suk (S 184); most significant among the collections so far registered only chronologically are those of Pavel BoŘkovec, Luboš Fišer, J.B. Foerster, Otakar Ostrčil, František Škroup, and Ladislav Vycpálek. In addition, the museum holds 123 melodramas outside collections from estates, mostly as prints but also in some cases as manuscripts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Josef Bohuslav Foerster (1859-1951) is one of the greatest figures in Czech music. During the inter-war period he was highly esteemed as a composer and an important representative of Czech culture, but during the second half of the twentieth century his works almost fell into oblivion. During the past decade the interest of musical performers and scholars has again turned to Foerster. The Czech Museum of Music administers the largest collection of sources pertaining to Foerster's life and work. Its foundation consists of materials from Foerster's estate, the most important part of which are items documenting his multifaceted artistic work. First and foremost is the set of musical autographs, accounting for most of his musical works, followed by a large collection of Foerster's own drawings and paintings, and manuscripts of his literary writings. Work is presently underway on catalogues of the musical manuscripts and works of visual art. The present article summarizes knowledge acquired during preparation of the catalogue of Foerster's musical autographs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which discusses the authorship of the manuscript MS Chisianus E VIII 251 at the Vatican Library which includes the oldest copy of the Arabic-Latin translation by Michael Scot of "De animalibus," by Aristotle and the commentary "Abbreviatio Avicenne," by Avicenna. It suggests that the copy involved in the creation of this copy and discusses several correction techniques that appear in the text.

During the early nineteenth century a popular obsession with autograph collecting swept through the United States. Among such "autographomaniacs", handwritten signatures belonging to the signers of the Declaration of Independence - and collections bringing together the signatures of all 56 - soon emerged as the most rarified. The intersection of autograph collecting and the Declaration of Independence provides fertile terrain for exploring the performative and preservative functions of the signature. This paper examines the special nature of the signature as a privileged site of authenticity and, in the special context of the Declaration, as a site of ritual reenactment and collective memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]