Treasures from the Vault

October 8, 2013 through February 9, 2014

Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757)
Fuga K. 30, 1756 (?)
The Morgan Library & Museum; Mary Flagler Cary Music Collection, 2011

The Morgan Library & Museum is home to some of the world’s greatest collections of medieval manuscripts, printed books and bindings, literary manuscripts, private letters and correspondence, and original music. Treasures from the Vault, an ongoing exhibition series, features works drawn from these diverse collections in the sumptuous setting of Pierpont Morgan’s 1906 Library. Highlights from this season’s selection include a newly identified copyist manuscript for the music of Domenico Scarlatti and Antonio Soler, both of whom were in service to the Spanish court of Maria Bárbara; two volumes from the first edition of Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman; Thomas Cromwell’s letter encouraging what would become King Henry VIII’s disastrous marriage to Anne of Cleves; two sixteenth-century maps, published three years after Hernán Cortés’s conquest of the Valley of Mexico; and an early draft of the scene between Cassio and Iago from Verdi’s Otello.

Verdi, Giuseppe, 1813-1901. Otello. Atto 3o, Scena 5a (Sketches) . Otello, Act 3, Scene 5 (draft) : autograph manuscript, 1887?
Accession Number: Cary 208 (Record ID: 115854)

The exhibits also displays two original scores of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which had not been together since 1824.