Anthony van Hoboken

Anthony van Hoboken (/ˈhoʊboʊkən/; Dutch: [ˈɦoːboːkə(n)]; 23 March 1887 – 1 November 1983) was a musical collector, bibliographer, and musicologist. He became especially well known for his scholarship on the music of Joseph Haydn and in particular for being the creator of the Hoboken catalogue, the standard scholarly catalogue of Haydn's works.

He was born in Rotterdam to a family that was successful in business, banking, and shipping. He was personally very well off and throughout life his choices were generally made without regard to the need to earn a living. He trained as an engineer (1906-1909) at the Technical College of Delft. Switching to music, he enrolled in 1909 in the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, where he studied harmony with Bernhard Sekles and composition with Iwan Knorr. In 1917 he moved to Munich, where he built his own villa in 1919 and lived in Bohemian and intellectual circles.

Hoboken's wealth enabled him to collect early editions and manuscripts of music from Bach to Brahms. This collection, begun in 1919 under the guidance of the composer Otto Vrieslander, eventually amounted to over 5,000 items, including over 1000 by Haydn. Among the Haydn items were the string quartets Op. 17, 20, 64, and 77; the piano sonata H XVI:49; and seven of the twelve "London" symphonies. Much later (1971), the collection was purchased by the Austrian state and now resides in the Austrian National Library in Vienna.

...
Wikipedia