This article provides the first survey of the music collection amassed by the amateur musician and latterly Inspector of the Berlin Royal Porcelain Factory (KPM), Carl Jacob Christian Klipfel (1727–1802). This is possibly the largest collection of a private individual to survive from the eighteenth century and one that provides a unique insight into the repertoire of a provincial collegium musicum in Meissen, an organization that hitherto has not been recognised in scholarship. The importance of Klipfel's association with Frederick the Great is also outlined. The second section outlines the repertoire, including the many unica copies of works by a large number of Dresden and other Saxon composers, and in particular, the music of Johann Christian Roellig (b.1716), who was de facto resident composer of the Meissen Collegium Musicum. The analysis also demonstrates the importance of city-to-city distribution of musical works, including those by Hasse, in contrast to the more familiar court-to-court transmission in the eighteenth century. The third section then discusses the contribution by the various copyists based in Meissen, Dresden and Berlin, including a study of the handwriting of the principal copyist, Klipfel himself, which makes it possible to date works within the collection more accurately.

Martino Bitti (1655/6–1743) was the leading violinist-composer working in Florence during a long period stretching from Corelli's first published works to the mature years of Vivaldi. Ironically, his nine sonatas for wind instruments are better known today than the 27 solo sonatas for his own instrument, the violin, which constitute a corpus of great technical accomplishment and musical expressiveness. Since the publication of a critical edition of Bitti's violin sonatas is currently in progress, the moment is right to present a thematic catalogue of his instrumental music, which forms the second part of the article. The first part comprises an updated biography of the composer (which for the first time proposes that Bitti briefly visited England) and a general evaluation of his highly distinctive musical style.

The identification of nearly 6,500 members of the piano industry in the 1881 census of England presents the first ‘snapshot’ of the English workforce of any period in its history. Traditionally, research has focused on high-profile makers whose workmanship survives, but many hundreds of workers, and a far greater body of intellect – and more diverse body of labour – were involved in advancing the piano than that which is suggested by a small number of luminaries working in the capital. Yet hitherto, with few exceptions, this wider body of workers has remained anonymous. Without company documents or extant instruments to mark their contribution, the identity of the majority of the workforce might only be known through the census. Nearly 6,500 men, women and children worked in approximately 400 piano-related occupations across 42 English counties, the majority based in London. But these figures tell only part of the story. A more complex interpretation may be drawn from secondary information not immediately apparent from the data. The social standing, entrepreneurial spirit, family history, success and hardship of the workforce may all be appraised via the census, and their individual and collective careers provide a surprising insight into the piano-making industry in mid-Victorian England.