Kassler Collection

The Jamie and Michael Kassler Collection contains a significant collection of books on music and printed music published in Britain from the mid-17th century to the 20th century.

About the collection

The Jamie and Michael Kassler Collection contains a significant collection of books on music and printed music published in Britain from the mid-17th century to the 20th century. It includes books on the practice of music, intonation and acoustics, theories of harmony and composition, histories of music, biographies of musicians, dictionaries of musical terms, and music periodicals. Many items have marks of ownership and annotations showing how they were used. The Collection is being transferred to the Library in stages.

Title page of an old book with text reading 'Natural Magick by John Baptifta porta in a Neopolitane in twenty books', a table of contents, and more text reading 'Wherein are fet forth All the Riches and Delights of the Natural Sciences'

Giambattista della Porta, Natural magick by John Baptista Porta, a Neapolitane In twenty books Wherein are set forth all the riches and delights of the natural sciences, 1669, nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn8534873  

Giambattista della Porta, Natural magick by John Baptista Porta, a Neapolitane In twenty books Wherein are set forth all the riches and delights of the natural sciences, 1669, nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn8534873  

Browse the Kassler collection

Collection highlights

Manuscripts

Rare books and music

About Jamie and Michael Kassler

Dr Jamie C. Kassler and Dr Michael Kassler are eminent Australian scholars who specialised in English and European music theory and practice from the 17th to the 20th century and their relationships to philosophy, science, computing and printing. These interests form the basis of their collection of rare books, music, manuscripts and ephemera. The Kasslers came to Australia from the United States in 1974 on Michael Kassler's Guggenheim Fellowship and settled permanently in Sydney.

Jamie C. Kassler, a musicologist and intellectual historian, was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities in 1991 for her contributions to musicology. In 2003 she received the Centenary Medal for service to Australian society and the humanities in the study of philosophy. The subjects of her books and articles include the science of music in the Georgian era, the beginnings of the modern philosophy of music, representing speech through musical notation, musical models in fields such as early science and the brain and mental functioning, Isaac Newton's sensorium concept, and the writings of the polymath, Roger North.

Michael Kassler, a musicologist and computer consultant, was regarded by his composer-mentors including Henry Cowell and Milton Babbitt as a talented young composer. His honours degree at Harvard was in mathematics, and during his postgraduate work at Princeton University he developed the first programming language for musical information retrieval. The subjects of his books and articles include the theories of tonality of A.F.C. Kollmann and Heinrich Schenker, the music trades in Georgian England, the composer Samuel Wesley, the awakening English interest in J. S. Bach and his music, and music entries at Stationers’ Hall. Through his consultancy he advocated robotics and automation applications across Australian industries. He was a founder of the Australian Robot Association (now the Australian Robotics and Automation Association Inc.), and his publications include a guide to the robotics marketplace in Australia.

Page published: 19 Jul 2019

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