New developments in the Music Faculty Library

Happy new academic year! We hope that you had a lovely break and are looking forward to getting back to it this year. While you've been away there have been a few new developments so it may be useful to read the rest of this post so you'll be prepared for the new term ahead.

Printing, copying and scanning

From now on you will need to use your Bodleian Libraries username and password to use PCAS machines for printing, copying and scanning. This is the same password that is required to login to reading room PCs and Bodleian Libraries WiFi: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/using/password

What do i need to do?

Please ensure you know your old PCAS username and password and your Bodleian login so you can transfer any remaining balance via our online portal: https://pcasportal.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

If you have forgotten your username please email pcas@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. for help. New users will automatically have an account set up for them.

The Libraries have replaced existing copiers with machines that offer a greener and more reliable service. Library staff will be on hand to answer any questions and offer assistance with the new machines. For full information please see our PCAS Development pages.

If you have any questions please come and speak to library staff, visit our PCAS Development pages or contact pcas@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

New library desk

The MFL's issue desk has had a facelift so staff now have a larger and more convenient work area and so that wheelchair users can use the desk more easily. It would be great if you could place any items to take out or return on the higher part of the desk, to either side of the new cut-out so that staff can reach them without stretching.

Staffing

As of the middle of October Jenny will be going off on maternity leave for the rest of the academic year. Rosie will be covering most of her responsibilities during this time and Tigger (who usually works in the MFL in the evenings and on Saturdays) will also be around 9am - 5pm on weekdays. 

If you have any problems or questions about anything library-related please don't hesitate to ask!

Calling all singers!

Following a request from a student, we have arranged a trial of the database IPA Source. It’s an online library of nearly 12,000 opera arias and art song texts in International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions and literal translations. To find it, go to OxLIP+ via the link at the top of the SOLO page and either search for it by title or find it in the list of New Resources and Trials. Please try it out and tell us what you think. If you’re not in the library, you’ll need to log in to SOLO to get access. The trial period ends on 12^th February.

Happy new (academic) year - news from the MFL.

A very warm welcome to those of you who are new to Oxford and welcome back to those who are returning for the new academic year. It has been a busy summer for the Music librarians. Newcomers will not notice the difference but, for returning students and staff, the more observant among you will see that a lot of things in the Music Faculty Library have moved around.  Now that the majority of the books have been reclassified, we have combined the reference and lending books into a single sequence upstairs on the first floor. Reference books are still identifiable by the presence of a red stripe on the spine and the system will complain if you try to check them out but we hope that their presence on the shelves next to lending books with similar classmarks (rather than in a separate sequence) will be a useful development. The Short-Loan books remain on the ground floor, now concentrated in the bay by the window opposite the library desk. The shelves by the library entrance are in the process of being filled with oversize books, many of which were formerly kept in closed access behind the library desk, and DVDs.

The other big difference is that the sheet music collections, formerly kept in boxes on the top floor and hence divorced from the main sections of printed music on the ground floor, have been united with their main sections so, for example, the boxes of unbound keyboard music from the top floor have been moved downstairs and are now kept with the more substantial bound volumes of keyboard music on the ground floor. The top floor now contains the remnants of the print periodical (journal) collection. 

While the ground floor now contains all the instrumental music, along with the full and miniature score sequences, all the vocal music is concentrated on the first floor (opera/oratorio vocal scores, songs, part songs, etc.) in the bays to the left of the door from the staircase. The lending sets of collected editions have been moved from the first floor to the ground floor and are shelved in alphabetical sequences before the reference set sequences begin.

We apologise for the fact that it may take a while for you to get your bearings but we hope you’ll eventually come to agree that the resulting arrangement, in which we have sought to reduce the number of sequences, is an improvement on the previous system. We have done our best to complete as much of this work as possible before the beginning of term, including the relabelling of the shelves and updating of the floor plans, but please be patient while we continue to fine-tune the arrangements. If you are struggling to find what you need please don't hesitate to ask at the library desk and we will point you in the right direction.

Another development to have taken place in the last few months has been the inclusion of data from the card catalogues for the Bodleian Library’s music collections in SOLO so practically all the Bodleian’s printed music scores can now be located through SOLO rather than through the card catalogues which were latterly searchable through the separate online ‘flipbook’ viewer. We hope that this will be a welcome improvement.

Weston Library - Music Update

The Weston Library is now very near completion so here is some more information about what Musicians can expect to find when the new building opens and a warning of a certain amount of disruption in the next few weeks as the reading room is transferred from Duke Humfrey.

As already advertised elsewhere, Duke Humfrey’s Library will close to readers at 7.00pm on Friday 19^th September and there will be no access to the Music open shelf collections nor any fetching of music scores until service is resumed in the Weston Library on Monday 29^th September. The intervening week will be spent in moving the books, equipment and staff currently located in Duke Humfrey and preparing the new reading room for use the following week. All material still on reserve in Duke Humfrey and the Special Collections Reading Room will be returned to the stacks on 19^th. A small number of music scores which are moving to the Weston Library open shelves are being moved in advance of the closure of Duke Humfrey so will, regrettably, be unavailable until service resumes on 29^th. Although the building is opening to readers at the end of September, it will only gradually be filled and the programme of collection moves will continue all the way through to next summer. However, disruption will be kept to a minimum and it is expected that material being moved will be unavailable for only very short periods.

As most of you will know, Music will be accommodated in the Sir Charles Mackerras Reading Room which is located on the first floor of the Weston Library, in more-or-less the same position that it was latterly before the closure of the New Library (i.e. the old ‘PPE Gallery’). The room will also accommodate the reserve desk, serving not only the Mackerras Reading Room but also the adjoining reading room for western manuscripts, maps and rare books. You should be aware that, since the whole building is devoted to Special Collections (which includes all Music items), security in the building will be tight and the same restrictions (regarding food and drink, no bags, pencils only, etc.) which are currently in place in Duke Humfrey and the Special Collections Reading Room at the RSL will still apply.

Architect's impression of the Mackerras Reading Room

However, we are fortunate to have a great deal more space for Music than ever before so it will be possible for much more material to be on open access. When the reading room opens on 29^th September, you should find there the collection of open shelf books moved from Duke Humfrey (with a few additions), along with a selection of composer collected editions, with a few other music series and periodicals overflowing into other open access areas adjacent to the reading room itself. With one specific exception, this will be the first time that the Bodleian has had music scores on open shelves in living memory. While this material is being moved, during the next couple of weeks, it may not be available for ordering but other copies of much of it will also be found in the Music Faculty Library.

Architect's impression of the Weston Library as viewed from Broad Street

Over the course of the next few months, before the public opening of the building in March, more music materials will be moved from the Book Storage Facility in Swindon to other open access areas adjacent to the Mackerras Reading Room. This will include more collected editions and series but the final extent and make-up of the open access collection is yet to be determined. When this material arrives, it may cause the initial distribution of books and scores on the open shelves in the reading room to be revised so there will be a period of readjustment while we settle into our new home and work out how to make best use of the space.

Initially, closed access scores and other material will still need to be requested from its remote storage in Swindon but, during the course of the next few months, a large proportion of the remaining printed music collections will be moved back from Swindon into the Weston Library stacks so that fetching times for most items will be greatly reduced. The state-of-the-art bookstacks will at last provide appropriate conditions for the storage of our wealth of rare books and manuscripts.

Long-standing users of the Bodleian’s Music collections will remember the days when the old Music Reading Room was adjacent to the Music staff office, with an inter-connecting door which was always open, so that specialist Music staff were always on hand. While it is not possible for us to return to that position, it is intended that a member of the Music team will be on duty in the new reading room for most of the time during core hours.

Finally, I should like to thank everyone for their forbearance during several years of disruption while we have existed in conditions which have been far from ideal. We ask for your continued patience as we now settle in to our new surroundings. Although it will be several months before all the collections reach their final homes, we hope that the increased quantity of material on open access and improved facilities in the new building, coupled with the fact that records for all the printed music collections (generated from the old card catalogues) will shortly be loaded into SOLO, will provide greatly improved access to the Bodleian’s rich and varied music holdings.

For more information on the Weston Library and collection moves, please see http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/our-work/estates-projects/weston. If you have any questions about any of this, please ask and I’ll do my best to answer them.

MH

150 Years Ago

Today marks the 150^th anniversary of the birth of the music hall entertainer Vesta Tilley (1864-1952). Born Matilda Alice Powles, in Worcester, on 13^th May 1864, she became a child star who earned enough by the age of 11 to support both her parents and her twelve siblings. Her father was Harry Ball, a comedy performer himself and theatre manager, who promoted his daughter’s career and wrote songs for her to sing. She first appeared in public at the age of three and a half, at her father’s theatre in Gloucester, and toured the provinces as ‘The Great Little Tilley’ from the age of six until she adopted the name of Vesta Tilley 1878.

As a child, she was initially billed as “The Pocket Sims Reeves”, for her impersonation of the famous singer, John Sims Reeves (1821-1900), and she went on to become the country’s most popular male impersonator. She dressed as fashionable young men in top hats and tail coats and, singing in her very feminine soprano voice, she entertained her working-class audiences by mildly satirizing the foppish manners of the rich in songs such as ‘Berlington Bertie’, ‘The latest chap on earth’ and ‘I’m a bachelor’.

In 1894, she made the first of several tours of the United States where she also enjoyed great popularity. She was at the height of her powers during the First World War and worked tirelessly for the war effort by singing patriotic recruitment songs. She retired from the stage in 1920 at the age of 56, drawing to a close a career which had lasted for over 50 years but thereafter making occasional charity appearances until her death more than 30 years later, in 1952.

The present anniversary is conveniently encapsulated in the title of the song illustrated here, one of dozens of Vesta Tilley song sheets in the Bodleian Library’s vast collections of music hall songs.

Easter vacation opening hours

Vacation borrowing begins on Monday 10th March. Please note that the MFL will be closed for one week of the Easter break. Full details of our vacation opening hours are here:

JMcP

Vacation borrowing

Books and scores needed for the Christmas break?

Week-loan books and music may be borrowed for the vacation from next Monday, 2nd December, and will be due back on Tuesday 21st January.

Do you need something from the Short Loan Collection?

We need to keep one copy of all Short Loan Collection books here for the vacation so that people who stay in Oxford have access to the whole collection.  However, you CAN take Short Loan items if there are two copies of the item that you need on the shelf.  From next Friday morning, 6th December, duplicated Short Loan books will be available for loan until Friday 17^th January (Week 0).  You will need to bring two copies of the book you want to the library counter to prove that there’s a spare to leave on the shelf.  There’s usually a bit of a rush, so come early if you want to take one of the “doubles” available. 

You will need to be here in person if you want to do this; you may not just renew online a Short Loan that you have already borrowed. Don’t despair if there is only a single copy left on Friday morning.  By Saturday (we’re open 10am till 1pm), all two day Short Loans will have to have been returned and often you can harvest a "double” on the Saturday.

Are you going to be around for some or all of the vacation?

Here are details of the MFL's vacation opening hours:

JM

Business as usual at the MFL

We are delighted to report that the essential maintenance work in the library has now been completed. Access to the CD collection and the Multimedia Resource Centre has been fully restored and we expect both PCAS printers to be returned to their homes in the photocopying room early next week.

We'd like to thank our readers for their patience while the works were being carried out and hope that they didn't cause too much inconvenience.

JM

Essential building works in the Music Faculty

Last week a small flood in the Music Faculty led to the discovery of major plumbing and heating problems affecting the whole building. This has necessitated some fairly major building work throughout the Music Faculty for the next 4-5 weeks, affecting the library in the following ways:

1. The lower ground floor will be inaccessible until the work has been completed. There will therefore be no access to the MRC including the iMacs and listening facilities and no access to the CD collections. There are PCs with Sibelius software on them in the main library, please ask staff if you can't find them.

2. One of the photocopy machines/printers/scanners has been relocated to the ground floor of the main library, near to the composer collected works. There will only be access to this one machine in the MFL so please plan ahead in case of high demand.

3. There will be some degree of noise in the library while the work is being carried out.

4. There will be no heating in the MFL for at least the next 2 weeks. The temperature is fine at the moment but please bear in mind if the weather takes a turn for the worse that it may get a little chilly in the library.

We will keep our readers updated as and when we find out any more details about the works but we apologise in advance for the disruption they will cause. If you have any questions about the works and how they might affect you, please email the library and we'll do our best to answer them.

JM

Bodleian Music card catalogue now searchable online

It is now possible, for the first time, to browse the card catalogues for the Bodleian’s printed music collections without having to come to the Library. The cards have been scanned and the images made accessible online as a kind of ‘virtual’ card catalogue here. This is part of a project which will eventually see brief records for this material loaded into SOLO.

Since 1992, all music scores acquired by the central Bodleian have been catalogued online and are therefore accessible through SOLO, the online catalogue for most of Oxford’s libraries. Additionally, several retrospective conversion projects over the years have meant that a significant quantity of earlier accessions have been recatalogued, notably opera scores, a large proportion of our pre-1800 editions, music hall songs and a selection of important 20^th century composers and collected editions. However, that still leaves approximately 75% of the Library’s music holdings represented only by the bulky card catalogues which used to dominate the old Music Reading Room and now line the central aisle of Duke Humfrey’s Library.

The card catalogues in Duke Humfrey's Library

A full recataloguing job was deemed to be prohibitively expensive but, back in 2011, the Library was fortunate to receive a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund a more economical approach to making the rich Music holdings of the Bodleian more widely accessible. Teaming up with the Maps section of the Library (who have a similar problem to Music) we arranged for 536,400 cards to be scanned and sent the card images away for the information on them to be keyed into a database. This task was outsourced to a company in the Philippines whose work is currently being checked and enhanced by a small team of editors based in the Bodleian’s Osney One Building in Osney Mead. Once that work is complete, by the summer of 2014, most of the data will be converted into brief MARC records and loaded into Aleph (the integrated library system) and will become searchable and the items requestable via SOLO.

A catalogue drawer

The ‘virtual’ card catalogue is a by-product of this project. An interface has been developed to make the card images accessible online using ‘flipbook’ technology which allows access to the card ‘drawers’ at frequent index points. Once you have entered a ‘drawer’, you can browse the cards until you find what you are looking for. Each card image comes with an e-mail icon which will bring up a web form to enable registered Bodleian users to request the item from the stacks. After entering your name, library card number and contact details, the form automatically captures the filename of the image and sends it to library staff for ordering to the Music reading room in Duke Humfrey.

A sample card from the Main card catalogue

In fact, several distinct music catalogues are included in this project. In addition to the main card catalogue (begun in the 1920s but incorporating much earlier material), the hand-written supplementary slip catalogue (now containing mostly minor Victorian editions received under legal deposit) can be found, along with composer and title indexes to popular music (ca. 1953-1991), and a partial index to printed music found in journals or non-music publications. Included also are a small number of cards for microfilm sets and some individual music manuscripts available on film, along with a partial index to music manuscripts catalogued between about 1965 and 2009, but the legibility of some of these hand-written cards leaves much to be desired. Please ask music staff if you need help in deciphering them.

One of the supplementary slips

Items from the old catalogues which have already been recatalogued online were removed from the drawers so duplicate entries between SOLO and the scanned cards should be minimal. Links to the ‘new’ catalogue can be found on the SOLO homepage. SOLO should always remain your first port-of-call when looking for any music scores but remember to check the card images if you can’t find what you need in SOLO, if it was published before 1992. If you still can’t find what you need, it may be worth asking Music library staff as cataloguing practices over the years have often been quite obscure and what you want may not always be filed where you might expect to find it!

A card from the Light Music catalogue

While this solution falls short of the ideal – the complete recataloguing of all music scores in SOLO which would see everything fully and consistently described and indexed – it is hoped that the result of this more pragmatic approach will be a considerable improvement on the present situation. The new interface has been released in its ‘beta’ phase and currently works best in Firefox and Chrome browsers. Functionality issues with Internet Explorer are being addressed and a few other minor improvements are planned for the coming weeks. For more information on the coverage of the card catalogues and help in using them, please see the music LibGuides. Comments are welcome to music@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

MH

Graduating this summer..?

If you're a music student graduating this year you're most likely coming to the end of your written exams this week. We hope they went well and that you'll be able to enjoy your last couple of weeks as undergraduates!

Before you disappear for the summer please make sure you've returned all your books, scores and recordings to the library and that you've paid off all of your library fines. Otherwise you may not be able to graduate, which would be a shame after having put in so much work over the last 3 years...

You can pay off fines owed to a Bodleian Library in any Bodleian lending library.

If you have lost something don't worry, just let us know as soon as possible and we can sort it out.

Don't forget to use up any PCAS credit you have left if you don't think you'll be coming back to the Bodleian Libraries to use the printers or photocopier any time in the next 2 years. Refunds are not available but credit can be transferred to another account if requested. Email: pcas@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. It can also be used to pay for Bodleian Library Postal Photocopying orders that can be requested by anyone, from anywhere in the world.

And finally, good luck to those of you doing recitals! I'll look forward to coming along to hear some of them!

JM

Comb binding at the MFL

Since submission deadlines are fast approaching, this seems like a good time to remind you that the Bodleian Music Faculty Library offers a comb binding service. A4 (£2 per copy) and A3 (£3 per copy) binding is available. It is not necessary to book an appointment and we can bind while you wait. However, when bringing your submissions to the library for binding, please be aware of the following:

• We can only bind submissions between 9am and 5pm during our fully staffed hours.
• If the submission is A3 and portrait it may take us a little bit longer so please allow plenty of time and we may ask you to leave it with us and come back to collect it later.
• On submission days we can be very busy and there is often a queue for binding. In order to avoid undue stress, please ensure that you allow at least an hour for binding if you're coming into the library in the morning on deadline day.

And remember: 

• If you're intending to print a declaration form in the library you'll need to have a PCAS account with some credit on it.
• You'll need a large envelope and a small envelope to place your work and declaration form in respectively.
• You need to know your candidate number. If you don't know what it is, it's a good idea to find out what it is in advance of deadline day.
• Don't put your name on your work!

Good luck!

JM

Changes to SOLO: improvements to display of records and clustering.

Over the weekend of the 28th-29th July, as a result of feedback from readers, several improvements to SOLO were implemented. The most significant of these from a musical perspective is the alteration to the way that SOLO clusters search results

Before these recent developments SOLO would cluster materials that it considered to be versions of the same work into 1 search result, regardless of their format. This is a very useful feature for books as it means that all editions of the same book are clustered together, making what might otherwise be a very long list of results appear much shorter. However, for a musical work it became a little confusing as SOLO would group both scores and sound recordings into one cluster, often making what was available somewhat unclear.

As a result of the changes that were implemented over the weekend, SOLO will now exclude early printed books (pre-1830), maps, music and audio-visual items from the clustering so that they will be visible in the main results list, separate from any clustered records.

Other changes to SOLO include the consolidation of the 'Request' and 'Locations' tabs into a single 'Find & Request' tab, which has streamlined the requesting process.

In addition to this, it is now possible to limit searches to 'Physical Resources (not online)' in the dropdown menu next to the main search box. Further information about all of the changes to SOLO can be found here.

We think the new features make searching for music scores and sound recordings much easier, do you? We'd welcome any feedback.

JMcP

Happy Birthday Percy!

Today marks the 146th birthday of the little-known Anglo-German composer Percy Sherwood (1866-1939). Having languished in obscurity since the First World War, his music is now being rediscovered and two recordings have been released in the last few weeks, drawing upon sources in the Bodleian Library, which holds virtually all his surviving manuscripts.

Born in Dresden on 23rd May 1866, Sherwood’s father (John) was a university lecturer in English and his mother a singer (Auguste Koch). Percy studied piano and composition at the Dresden Conservatoire under Bertrand Roth and Felix Draeske respectively and subsequently taught there, rising to a Professorship in 1893.

He was evidently well-regarded as a pianist, composer and conductor and, during the course of his life composed five symphonies, concertos for piano, violin and cello, a significant body of chamber music and a prize-winning Requiem, along with smaller-scale piano pieces. Some of the piano and chamber music was published in Germany towards the end of the 19th century and in the early years of the 20th.

Finding himself in England with his family at the outbreak of war in 1914, Sherwood was unable to return to Germany and remained in this country until his death on 15th May 1939, just a few months before the outbreak of the Second World War. The successful career he had enjoyed in pre-war Germany was not to be continued in England and he seems to have vanished almost without trace. Living in Hampstead, he devoted himself to more composing and teaching including, for a while, weekly visits to Oxford and Cambridge. However, his music – lyrical, passionate and firmly in the late-romantic tradition – was out of step with contemporary trends and performances, if any, would have been few and far between.

Sadly, not all his music has survived but virtually all the known extant manuscripts are now in the Bodleian and have attracted the attention of several scholars and performers in the last couple of years. The recent recordings are of the 2nd Piano Concerto, played by Hiroaki Takenouchi with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Martin Yates (http://www.duttonvocalion.co.uk/proddetail.asp?prod=CDLX7287) and the complete music for cello and piano, played by Joseph Spooner and David Owen Norris (http://www.toccataclassics.com/cddetail.php?CN=TOCC0145).  It is to be hoped that they will begin to draw attention to a musical voice which has been silent for too long and bring to Percy Sherwood the recognition he deserves.

MH

JSTOR Arts & Sciences VIII now available

We are pleased to announce that we now have access to the JSTOR e-journal package 'Arts and Sciences VIII'.  This includes several key music titles, including Musica Disciplina, Music Perception, College Music Symposium and Music and the Moving Image. For a full list of the titles included in A&S VIII click here.

Don’t forget that JSTOR’s coverage is primarily retrospective and we have access to many other titles, including current issues, from other publishers. Always check the title list in OU e-Journals or SOLO.

MH

Haydn à l’anglaise

Next time you are heading for Duke Humfrey’s Library, do spare a moment to look at the latest display in the Proscholium exhibition case. Haydn à l’anglaise explores the way in which Haydn’s two collections of Lieder, published by Artaria in Vienna in 1781 and 1784 respectively, reached England and how London publishers sought to capitalise on the popularity of Haydn’s music which had taken England by storm, even before the composer’s first visit to this country in 1791.

English versions of Haydn’s two original sets of Lieder were produced, the first adapted by William Shield to English poetry by a number of different named English poets in his collection of ‘Twelve ballads’, published by Longman & Broderip in 1786. Versions of the second set of Lieder were published in an anonymous collection of 1789. In many cases, the English words bore little or no relationship to their German originals.

There was evidently a market for the music of the composer whom the London press had dubbed ‘the Shakespeare of Music’. The 24 original songs proved to be not enough for the musical public so, in order to satisfy the demands of the amateur market, the London publishers turned to Haydn’s instrumental music and set words to tunes from the string quartets and symphonies which were widely played in this country at the time. Two such collections appeared, in 1787 and 1789, one arranged by the eminent English composer, Samuel Arnold. The opposite process also took place and the composer, Thomas Haigh, who had received lessons from Haydn on his first visit to England, turned some of Haydn’s songs into keyboard pieces.

The Proscholium display includes early English editions of Haydn’s songs and related works, and a couple of autograph manuscripts from the Bodleian’s collections. It also features the fine portrait of the 67-year-old composer by the young artist Johann Carl Rössler (1775-1845) which formerly belonged to Mendelssohn but now normally hangs in the Bate Collection in the Faculty of Music. The exhibition is designed to illustrate a lecture being given by Dr Derek McCulloch on 30th March and a short concert by his ensemble Caf€ Mozart, featuring some of the music which they have recently recorded on a CD, also entitled Haydn à l’anglaise. The exhibition runs until 8th April.

MH

Easter vacation borrowing

Books and scores taken out of the library from Monday 5th March onwards will be due back on Tuesday 24th April. Plan your vacation work early to make sure you get all of the books you need!


Short Loan books needed for the Easter break?


We need to keep one copy of all Short Loan Collection books here for the vacation so that people who stay in Oxford have access to the whole collection.  However, you CAN take Short Loan items if there are two copies of the item that you need on the shelf.  From Friday of 8th week, 9th March, duplicated Short Loan books will be available for loan until Friday 20th April (Week 0).  You will need to bring two copies of the book you want to the library counter to prove that there’s a spare to leave on the shelf.  There’s usually a bit of a rush, so come early if you want to take one of the “doubles” available. 


You will need to be here in person if you want to do this; you may not just renew online a Short Loan that you have already borrowed. Don’t despair if there is only a single copy left on Friday morning.  By Saturday (we’re open 10am till 1pm), all two day Short Loans will have to have been returned and often you can harvest a "double” on the Saturday.


Easter vacation opening hours:


12th - 16th March:         9:00am - 5:00pm
19th March - 4th April:   9:30am - 4:30pm 
**** 5th - 15th April:     CLOSED ****
16th - 20th April:           9:00am - 5:00pm


JMcP

Ragtime to riches: a musical legacy at the Bodleian Library

Ragtime to riches is the title of a small exhibition currently in place in the Proscholium, the entrance hall to the Old Bodleian Library, in celebration of Walter Newton Henry Harding (1883-1973) whose astonishing collection was the largest single bequest ever received by the Library when it arrived in Oxford in 1975. Born in south London in 1883, Harding emigrated with his parents to the United States at the age of four and spent the rest of his life in Chicago, making his living as a ragtime pianist, cinema organist and organist at various churches and masonic lodges in the locality. Harding became fascinated by the words of the songs he heard and performed and began to build up a remarkable collection of verse, drama and printed music which, by the time of his death in December 1973, completely filled his house in downtown Chicago. Harding was not an academic but he had a detailed knowledge of the diverse material in his collection, much of which was indexed on tens of thousands of hand-written cards.

A hand-made miscellany

The exhibition coincides with the progress of the Digital Miscellanies Index, a three-year project, led by Dr Abigail Williams, based at the University of Oxford Faculty of English Language and Literature, and funded by the Leverhulme Trust.  The project is creating a database of the contents of approximately 1,000 eighteenth-century English poetic miscellanies, popular printed collections of poetry and songs, the majority of which can be found in Harding’s collection. Although the display can do little more than scratch the surface of Harding’s enormous collection, it aims to give a flavour of Harding the man and collector, despite the fact that some aspects of his life and interests could not be represented owing to a lack of space.

The musical portions of the Harding Collection fall into several categories, including English, French and Italian opera scores and vocal scores, English song, folk music, American songs and music hall songs. When the collection was received in 1975, it greatly enriched the Library’s already strong holdings in many of these areas and made it the most important repository of American song material on this side of the Atlantic.

One of a set of small 16th-cent.
Italian part books

The importance of the Harding Collection is not so much in the value of individual items (although there are many rare, valuable and unique things) but in its near comprehensive coverage of the areas in which he set out to collect. He was not a wealthy man but, fortunately, the kind of material that interested him, primarily ephemeral, popular publications, had little commercial value in the middle of the twentieth century so he was able to buy a great deal very cheaply. He is known to have said that he felt it was better to go into debt and buy the stuff while it was still available then he could rejoice in his collection for the rest of his life.

The exhibition runs until 29^th January and, on Wednesday 18^th January, there is a related event at which Dr Abigail Williams and Prof. Michael Burden will speak about different aspects of the collection, with some musical entertainment thrown in (see http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/about/exhibitions/events/ragtime-to-riches-celebrating-a-musical-legacy).

MH

Christmas quiz: how many did you guess correctly...?

Here are the answers to our Christmas quiz:

1. Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring.
2. Berlioz: Shepherds Farewell from L'enfance du Christ.
3. Bach: Christmas Oratorio.
4. Rimsky-Korsakov: Christmas Eve.
5. Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker.

The pieces were all Christmas-themed apart from The Rite of Spring.

Although lots of people guessed 3 or 4 of the pieces correctly, only 1 person managed to identify all 5. Congratulations to Oxford music undergraduate Tim Anderson! Your (edible) prize awaits you in the Bodleian Music Faculty Library. 

Wishing everybody a Happy New Year, and thanks for playing along!

Christmas Quiz

In December, instead of our usual 'Composer of the Month' display, we have created a musical quiz. So far, nobody has come up with five correct answers. Can you?

The following images are single pages from 5 different musical scores. Can you work out which pieces of music the pages are from? There is a link between 4 of them but there is one odd one out. Good luck!

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

JMcP