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An Unrecorded Collection of Early Music Sources in Lampeter: Description and Annotated Inventory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Abstract
The library of University of Wales Lampeter, one of the oldest universities in Britain, collected many rare items, including music, during the first thirty years after its foundation in 1822. This music collection has never really been explored hitherto, and there are no printed references to it in the standard literature. The collection contains nearly 200 items, ranging from 1711 to the mid-nineteenth century but dating mainly from 1770–1820. Alongside the printed music are sixteen instrumental tutors and fifteen manuscripts. Judging by names written on some of the items, the collection was assembled piecemeal from various private collections. For nearly a third of the items, no exact match has yet been found elsewhere. These include previously unknown editions of music by Arne, Mozart and others; previously unknown works by composers such as William Burnett, Francis Linley and William Howgill; and even possibly unknown composers such as J. Gray and Henry Schroeder.
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- Original Articles
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- Copyright
- Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 2008
Footnotes
1
I wish to express my profound gratitude to the library staff, and in particular David Selwyn, Peter Hopkins, Caroline Pilcher, Liesa Martin and Carol Dery, for confirming to me the existence of this music collection, for providing me with every assistance in examining it, and for answering numerous questions about it and about individual items within it. I should also like to thank Peter Ward Jones for reading through a draft of this article and inventory and making many valuable suggestions. The present study concerns only the music items I was able to examine personally. It is possible that a few more were somehow overlooked. The library also has a good collection of printed libretti for musical works performed in London theatres during the same period. These have been catalogued previously by the staff of the library and can be traced through its online catalogue.
References
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