La Tombelle collection

This collection, digitized from part of the archives preserved by Mme Antonia Orsini, a descendant of Fernand de La Tombelle, comprises a wide variety of documentation that illuminates the different facets of a musician whose interests ranged from photography, poetry, archaeology, cars to astronomy. The manuscripts of La Tombelle’s works are arranged below in order of their listing in a catalogue put together by Jean-Christophe Branger and Emmanuel Filet. These are followed by the composer’s writing (published and in manuscript form), concert and music competition programmes, which he kept in bound volumes, and notebooks devoted to his studies of counterpoint, fugue and harmony. An image-bank – photographs, posters and diplomas – rounds out the online collection. 

An initial survey of these documents was published by Jean-Christophe Branger in the Revue de musicologie in 2011: “Fernand de La Tombelle (1854-1928), ‘a scholar and a gentleman of music’” (vol. 97, no. 2, pp. 361-407).