Most prized item in your collection?

[davidjosepha]

Do you have a book of sheet music you own that you value above the others? Maybe one you've learned tons of pieces out of? Or one you'd be really lost without?

My favorite book in my collection is my Dover "Complete Shorter Works for Piano" by Brahms. The binding is falling apart due to too much use and a couple pages in the Rhapsodies Op. 79 area are falling out as a result of over-enthusiastic page turns, but I love the book. Brahms was a genius and wrote many beautiful pieces. I've only learned a few, but I enjoy reading through the pieces in that book...someday, I'll learn every piece in it and be able to play them all at will, and play them so much people will say, "Honestly, David, don't you know anything other than Brahms?" The book itself is wonderful, too...really nice silky-smooth pages and dark, clear engraving. I really wish those pages were still attached to the binding though...

So, anyone else? Perhaps you have a collection of Beethoven sonatas you're fond of, or Chopin nocturnes? Or Rachmaninoff preludes?

[m1469]

My collection of books is pretty small compared to some people's, nonetheless, for a gal who just started in University and has purchased pretty much everything on my own, I enjoy that I have some kind of standard collection at all!  Of those, my most prized book would be the Henle Urtext edition of the Mozart Sonatas, book II.  The binding has fallen apart twice (I've had it rebound, but the cover and some pages have detached), and it feels like a relic to me.  If ever I handle it, I feel like I am holding a baby, or even more than that, as though it will go to dust and ashes if I don't handle it just right.  The pages seem so fragile and I feel (for some reason) as though I've been given it through some wormhole in the Centuries, straight from Mozart himself.    

[rachmaninoff_forever]

I have a book with a bunch of little movements of sonatas my first teacher gave me.  He got it when he was like 11 years old.  He's like 40 something now so that's like a 30 something year old book there.  It has all of his notes and teachers notes in there so it's pretty worn out.

I'm not the sentimental type of person, but it's he most important book I have.

[thalbergmad]

I have very old sheets by Steibelt, Woelfl and Herz, that i play from but do not scribble over

Thal

[chopin2015]

I have a very old Chopin Valse collection. It is so old the paper crumbles. I first got it with the piano I used to have, about 8 years ago. I looked at it many times and said, these pieces are to sight read. LOL not all of them obviously. I also have the Chopin concerto in E minor. I will write all over it because I already got hot cheetos stains on it the first day I got it But other than that, All my music is very valuable to me.

[j_menz]

I have a fairly large collection, but on reflection I don't have any particular volume that is most prized - I could replace any of them really with a different copy.  That wouldn't be the case with some books I have.

[49410enrique]

hmm ironically my most prized 'score' is one i have not studied out of or will for some time (until i can get it 'repaired' and rebound perhaps), as it is quite fragile but in pretty good condition fro a book from 1892. Big maroon hardcover titled 'selected classics for piano forte' published by the oliver ditson company. i don't think it was ever 'used' really non of the pages are marked i think it was just vintage "new old stock' at seemed to just be ignored decade after decade year in year out until i 'rescued' it from an 'oversized scores' box underneath a shelf at my fav used book store, it was sandwiched between a bunch of tattered old parial scores of various works for all sorts of instruments.
includes works by (and some of these i have never seen so i need to check pianophilia to see if they would like  any of these scans if they are not up elsewhere)

chaminade
durrand
juddasohn
grieg
goddard
lack
wittic
dreyschock
popper
dubois
mascagni
gregh
rubenstein
grutzmacher
helmund
moszkoski
weiss
paderweski
brambach
hoffmann
thome
paradies
saint-saens
kirchner

i hope to get the binding fixed so i can feel like i can open it flat without destroying it as it looks like there are some rare beautiful pieces in there i'd love to learn and perform. also to know that when this book was made this was fairly 'new music' w regard to some of the pieces is pretty cool

[chadbrochill17]

My Mikuli edition of Chopins preludes nocturnes and waltzes. I love that book.