How did they get there?

A few of the works were actually composed in the places where they are now to be found: Växjö, for example, has dance-music composed by a local teacher, Salomon Eklin, in the later 1700s (ex.1). Others were composed, copied or printed in Stockholm, and presumably bought for use in the various provincial centres: e.g. a setting of Metastasio's libretto Il re pastore (also set by Mozart), by Francesco Antonio Uttini, King Gustav III's maestro della musica di camera, the first act of which is now in Härnösand.

Most of the works seem to have been bought outside of Sweden, however, particularly from the part of northern Germany which was under Swedish rule during the 17th century (Bremen, Pommerania etc.), either ordered and sent, or bought by a Swede during his travels, like the Skara copy of Quantz' duetti, 'bought in Danzig for 3 thaler'. J.J. Hummel of Berlin and Amsterdam is the publisher most often represented in the Härnösand collection: but among the others is Henry Fougt, a Swede working in London.

Works were sold in both printed and hand-written copies: of Schütz' Historia der ... Geburth ... Iesu Christi ('Christmas Story'), for instance, only the Evangelist's part was printed, together with the words of the ten concerten, and an invitation to order hand-written copies of the music from the cantor in Leipzig or the organist in Dresden. The two copies which have survived in Uppsala - one complete, one incomplete - are perhaps from one of those sources (ex.2). Commercial publishers also issued hand-written copies, apparently when they did not expect the demand to be enough to make printing economical: Skara has a hand-written set of Sonate à Tre, marked "Dernière Edition... à Amsterdam/ Chez Estienne Roger".

Other manuscripts were clearly copied in the places where they are still kept: Växjö has printed copies of the first three parts of Heinrich Albert's Arien (1638, 1640, 1640), to which one Sven Tiliander (cantor?) added 23 pages of later songs of Albert's, and some extra parts to the earlier songs, in 1666 and 1667.

Some of the works were in the libraries of teachers or priests who moved from one place to another: Härnösand has mss. of Carl Nyrén labelled "Malmö"; "Linköping", "Alingsås", "Upsala" and "Stockholm"; and other works were owned by one Magister Berlin in Umeå in the north. Gertrude Sophia Solander, a priest's daughter, appears to have copied out her music-book when she was staying with relatives in Uppsala, and taken it back home with her to Piteå, Norrbotten.

Not least in historical importance are the works which were plundered from the continent during the various wars and taken back to Sweden: one such is the collection of Spanish and Catalan villancicos published by Hieronymus Scotus in Venice in 1556, the only surviving copy of which is in Uppsala (the so-called 'Cancionero de Upsala' - misleading because terms like 'chansonnier' and 'cancionero' are normally used for manuscript collections, and because Scotus' publication does not seem to have actually been used in Uppsala).