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Palace Green Library
Palace Green
DURHAM
DH1 3RN
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)191 334 2972
Email: pg.library@durham.ac.uk
Music
The historical development of Music dating back a thousand years can be researched in the print, manuscripts and archival collections of Archives and Special Collections, along with its more local development in the North-East of England, its particular development as an academic subject at Durham University, and its spread thence through the wider world.
General
Resources for some specific areas are highlighted below, but resources for many more specific topics can be discovered by searching for the appropriate topic (such as Music or Hymnody or Symphonies etc) in Discover and by restricting the search to ‘Durham Archives’ or by searching the printed catalogue by selecting the topic as a subject or keyword and restricting the search to ‘Special Collections’ or ‘Ushaw College’.
Music as an Academic Discipline
The development of the subject and department of Music in the university is reflected in the university’s own archive, in central, faculty and departmental files, in the records of the meetings of its various committees from Senate and Council down, in the exam papers, pass lists and mark sheets for the subject, and the university’s publications of such as the Gazette, Calendar, Journal, and Vice-Chancellor’s Reports, and newsletters and the like.Durham University technically had the right to award Music degrees in the 19th century, but it had no course for Music until the need of professional musicians for a qualification was recognised in 1889 by the establishment of the BMus. No residence was required and a preliminary Arts test provided access to the course which provided for 2 exams, the second of which included a musical composition. The successful ones of these, and the similar DMus ones, have been retained as a now extensive archive of musical pieces. Philip Armes, the cathedral organist and instigator of the degrees, was the first examiner, with Sir John Stainer, and Armes was appointed as the first professor of Music in 1897. These external music degrees met a need for quite a while and lasted until 1980, by which stage a BA in music for students in residence, taught within a music department, was well established.
The Archives and Special Collections section of the Library in the historic Palace Green Library, includes major collections of rare books in the Bishop Cosin (nationally-designated), Routh and Bamburgh libraries. These contain some books on mainly church music. ASC also provides access to arguably the most extensive surviving medieval monastic library in this country, that of the cathedral, which contains medieval manuscripts including music dating back to before the Conquest, many now digitised. The Cosin and Ushaw College manuscripts also contain service books with medieval music, such as graduals, missals, breviaries, and antiphonals. Many more music examples survive amongst the medieval fragments collection (Add.MS. 1950, much now digitised), or even still in situ as bindings on later books.
Later service books are also present in the rich Catholic resource of the Big Library at Ushaw College, including the college’s own music collection along with also the book collection there of the former English College in Lisbon. These are complemented by the libraries at PGL of the female religious communities of the Poor Clares of Woodchester and Darlington, and the Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre, built up largely in exile in Liege, and the music collection of the Catholic Everingham chapel. Finally, the Salvation Army (Durham) library has much on that organisation’s vigorous musical tradition.
Hymns
As regards a specific genre of music, ASC holds one of the most extensive collections of hymnody in the country. This is the Pratt Green collection of hymn books, and some psalters and studies of hymn writing, many on open access in the Barker Research Library. Manuscript material of the collection is accessible in the Search Room, including the papers of the hymn writers John Wilson (1905-1992), H.C.A. Gaunt (1902-1983), John Ellerton (1826-1893), and the Methodist minister and prolific hymnodist and translator of hymns Fred Pratt Green (1903-2000) himself. Invaluable also as a resource for the relations between an author and his publisher is the considerable collection of the writer of around 400 hymns, Timothy Dudley-Smith (b1926), former Bishop of Thetford.
Composers and Performers
The collections include the papers of the organist and composer, and initial examiner of the university’s external music degrees, perhaps best known for The Crucifixion, Sir John Stainer (1840-1901), and also those of the post-romantic composer Graham Whettam (1927-2007) which illustrate the efforts composers have to make to get their pieces performed or played. There are also papers of the female composers Else Headlam-Morley (1865-1950) and the increasingly appreciated Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944).
The archives of the local Durham Choral Society, originally established in 1946, and of Britain’s longest running chamber music ensemble, the Allegri String Quartet, founded in 1953, are also held, along with the papers of the local cellist, pianist, organist and conductor Nicholas Kilburn (1843-1923), the American conductor and pianist Ezra Rachlin (1915-1995), and the organist, pianist, violist, musicologist and student of Britten and Early Music, Peter Evans (1929-2018). The collection of the local music scholar Simon Fleming is a rich resource of printed and manuscript music of the 18th and 19th centuries garnered for his work on performance practice in the North East at that time.
Of course, the university itself is and has been rich in musical groups of all sorts – orchestral, chamber, choral, opera, musicals – at university and college level. The university’s archive has much in the way of programmes, and also on occasion recordings, ephemera, and increasingly reviews of their performances. There are also records of the Oriental Music Festival (Add.MS. 2014) which was put on 3 times in Durham in the 1970s and 1980s. The Local Collection, on open access in the Barker Research Library, has further printed ephemera of local musical performances, and also a range of CDs of local brass bands. The Durham Cathedral Archive also has material on the cathedral choir and its performances, including the regular music service sheets dating back to the late 19th century, and also records of the Old Choristers’ Association, and ephemera of the many concerts that have occurred in the cathedral.
Away from this country, the Sudan Archive offers an insight into 20th century musical practices there in the papers of B. Kennedy-Cooke, T.H.B. Mynors, and M. & M. Russell. Similarly, for Iran in the 1960s and 1970s, David Brooks’s papers include studies and recordings of the musical practices of the nomadic Bakhtiari tribe there.
