Music collectors

Shelf lives exhibition

The Shelf lives exhibition (18 January – 16 June 2012) at the University Library shows treasures from ten different collectors, one of which represents music. As far as music is concerned, the collectors theme will be continued in blog posts as well as in additional displays. So what is there to see and read?

Marion Margaret Scott, musicologist and composer, acquired a collection of Haydn materials during the course of her research. The collection is of particular interest both in its diversity (artefacts as well as early printed Haydn editions) as in the way in which it is documented by catalogues illustrating how Scott’s collecting and research was closely integrated. Marion Scott was very active in the domain of women and music and from a gender point of view the collection is also quite exceptional. An exhibition case devoted to Scott’s Haydn Collection is part of the Shelf Lives exhibition.

F. T. Arnold bookplate

The UL’s Music Department exhibition is devoted to two collections: the F.T. Arnold bequest of eighteenth-century instrumental music and treatises relating to the history of the thorough-bass, and the F. A. Booth collection of twentieth-century scores and recordings. Although very different in subject, both collections have been put together with particular care and reflect how much thought has gone into collecting and how well they have been looked after by their collectors. Both collectors studied subjects other than music at Cambridge, but would go on to devote a significant part of their lives to the study and performance of music.

For the Pendlebury Library display (to be found near the Issue Desk), we have focused on Richard Pendlebury, mathematician, musician and mountaineer, whose music collection would eventually form the basis of the Music Faculty library. More about the relation between Richard Pendlebury and the Pendlebury Library of Music is available in CULIB.

We will be blogging about all of these and about the many music collectors that didn’t make it into the exhibition cases – we really were spoilt for choice. For those interested in more than the music collectors, the Special Collections Blog will be introducing the many other collectors that are represented in Cambridge Library Collections.

AP