I was at Edinburgh University Library yesterday – I’m trying to work out which bound volumes might contain music that arrived through the legal deposit route. I was looking at one particular volume, and came to a batch of pieces all by the same Edinburgh-based composer. I looked him up – and found he spent some time in Italy in his youth, under the direction of a particular teacher.
Then I remembered that I’d encountered some music BY that teacher, in a different volume. And then – exploring the University Library catalogue – I found more by the Edinburgh composer AND more by the Italian musician. Is it remotely possible that the individual who arranged for that legal deposit volume to be bound, also knew the Edinburgh musician? It was some decades before music would have an official, recognised place in the University curriculum, but obviously some music was being collected.
Equally, might the music by the Italian – in another volume, not necessarily legal deposit, and in other volumes definitely not so – have come to Edinburgh in some way connected with his British pupil?
You might argue that this doesn’t have much to do with legal deposit. In one sense, that’s true. But if we’re thinking about what the University decided to keep, out of the legal deposit material that they received, then this is – if nothing else – quite interesting, surely?
As to the identity of these guys – well, let me enjoy the mystery a bit longer, once I’ve worked out if there’s any more to be discovered!
Colleague Dr Brianna Robertson-Kirkland, lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and researcher on various eighteenth and early nineteenth-century humanities projects, is also a member of the Claimed From Stationers’ Hall network. She has recently reviewed the Library of Congress digital music website, Early American Sheet Music, and you can read her review online in the Royal Musical Association research Chronicle (2018):-
Now safely back from the IAML Congress at Leipzig, I have to get back into harness at the workplace tomorrow. I gave my paper about our CFSH network on Thursday afternoon – well-attended, and well-received. It was a good week – plenty of interesting papers with a music library focus. The story of Peters (the publisher) music library was particularly fascinating, to name but one. During the week, one couldn’t help reflecting how often politics and wars have divided, relocated or destroyed precious collections. The Peters collection became Hinrichsen, then Peters again, was in state and then private and then state hands … a complex narrative, to be sure.
I attended a seminar about the mechanics of entering an original source on RISM, and heard an update about RILM. I also fell in love with a digital music app, visited the National Library, saw Bach’s Thomaskirche and attended three concerts. All in baking heat – on my final night, it was 33 degrees at 11 pm!
useful lists of historical names! If your list has both “ancient and modern”, I’ll still be happy to include the link. However, to keep it relevant, let’s not add lists of women composers from the 20th century onwards. The Claimed from Stationers’ Hall network is about predominantly Georgian music, published in Britain and legally deposited in British libraries – that’s the network’s remit, and that’s what the research funding is enabling!
I have a new book that I need to start reading: David J Golby, Instrumental Teaching in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Routledge, 2016 ) – originally an Ashgate imprint, 2004.
