Archives

[giles.enders]

During the past twenty years a number of music colleges, at least one major orchestra and Bristol University have disposed of part or most of their music archives.  It may be only rumour, but I now hear that The Royal Albert Hall is also letting things go. 
The only organisation that I know of in the UK where items seem to be safe is The Museum of Music History and they are grossly under funded.   Any thoughts about this?

[Gauk]

It is not just music. Archives of all sorts are in danger, and it is very worrying. Once material is lost, it can never be regained.

[Gareth Vaughan]

One presumes (and hopes) that items are safe in the copyright libraries - though not, in the case of sheet music as we know, always cheaply available in copy.

[Gauk]

Copyright libraries have published items; it is the danger to MS material that is worrying.

[eschiss1]

Agreed!

[giles.enders]

It is not just the music which is getting lost, it is details of performances, student history, photographs etc;  I give a couple of examples, Trinity college have almost no material about when Coleridge-Taylor was a professor there, The Guildhall who have given their archive to the Metropolitan archives, which now consist of a scrap book and an embargoed and incomplete list of former students not much for a 140 year history.

[Gareth Vaughan]

This is, indeed, extremely serious.  Is it possible that, as soon as anyone hears of an archive being got rid of we write to the appropriate authority to discover what plans they have for its disposal and offer it a good home? The RCM take care of their MSS - and mss given to the BL will be taken care of. Likewise the Fleisher Collection - and a number of other collections in the US.

[eschiss1]

I hope you're right about the Fleisher Collection.  Didn't one of their past administrators recently(?) write a letter with his concerns about it? (Or maybe they were just the typical concerns of any recently-ex-head of something- and I don't know the circumstances under which this person left-or-was-pushed, either. ...)

[Mark Thomas]

I have recently been involved in the borrowing of complete sets of parts and the partiturs from Fleisher, and found them very helpful, efficient and cheap, and the material to be in excellent condition.

[eschiss1]

_very_ glad to be mistaken on this point. Thanks. (hope they'll start a scanning program someday )

[Gareth Vaughan]

I have always found Fleisher efficient, helpful - and cheap.

[giles.enders]

To continue on this theme, is it known if there was an archive of The Crystal Palace concerts.  So many 'legends' appeared there and much music both well known or now completely forgotten was performed there.  Has any one tried to compile an archive from existing programmes or historic references? 
There were a number of music festivals around Britain during the nineteenth and early twentieth century which no longer exist for which quite commendable pieces of music were composed.  Is ther a reference to their archives?  For example The Norwich Festival.
A considerable number of composers and performers from Europe came to Britain either to perform or had works specially comissioned during this time.

[Mark Thomas]

I looked into the question of the Crystal Palace archives a few years ago. I was told by the Crystal Palace Museum that all the records, including those of the concerts there, were lost in the fire in 1936, which destroyed the building.

[Alan Howe]

That's very sad, isn't it? A real shame.

[giles.enders]

With reference to these 'lost' archives, it should be possible to partially reconstruct them by looking to other sources, for instance somewhere there are odd programmes of individual performances at say Crystal Palace which could be either put on line or collected by a central source.  One problem is who has the time or resources to do it.