Blog topic: Music
Guest blogger: Tyler Mitchell
Player piano roll repair: a report from Conservation
By Beth Ryan and Jill Sison
The Stanford Libraries now supports cylinder preservation
The Stanford Media Preservation Lab now supports cylinder transfers! With support from the Archive of Recorded Sound, SUL Tech Support, and Digital Library Systems and Services, SMPL was able to purchase an Endpoint Audio cylinder player.
Piano roll scanner update
The Stanford piano roll scanner has progressed from a prototype to a functional, production level machine since the last report in spring of 2017. As reported earlier, the scanner is based on a design by Anthony Robinson, a piano roll expert in England.
Maria Callas materials come to Stanford
The Stanford Archive of Recorded Sound is pleased to announce completion of the portion from the Robert Baxter Collection pertaining to the American-born Greek soprano, Maria Callas (1923-1977). During her lifetime, Callas was a fervent interpreter of the bel canto technique in the works of Donizetti, Rossini, and Bellini at La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, and other notable venues. Her dramatic interpretations of Verdi and Puccini are often regarded as some of the finest interpretations of all time.
Music Bibliographer Mimi Tashiro retiring
Mimi Tashiro, Music Bibliographer, has announced her retirement from Stanford Libraries beginning September 21. Mimi is incredibly devoted and loyal to Stanford University having spent her entire career of just over thirty-eight years as a distinguished music librarian at the Stanford Music Library.
Scanning project makes piano works available
A pilot project in the Music Library to digitize sheet music and make images available in the SearchWorks catalog has produced its first collection, made up of 140 piano arrangements and transcriptions. Basic records for these items have long been in SearchWorks, and are now greatly enhanced with access to the digital images and options for close examination and download. This collection was chosen for scanning because the paper is too brittle to withstand the handling that results from practice and performance.
Unique items found in the Howe Collection of Musical Instrument Literature
The Howe Collection of Musical Instrument Literature has now been processed and is available for research. The collection was created by Richard J. Howe, an oil company executive and mechanical engineer as well as a collector of mechanical musical instruments and associated literature. The Howe Collection of Musical Instrument Literature, one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of its kind, documents the development of the music industry and the manufacture of pianos, organs, and mechanical musical instruments. The materials in the collection include catalogs, books, magazines, correspondence, photographs, broadsides, advertisements, and price lists. The Howe collection was originally donated to the Institute of Piano Music at the University of Maryland and later transferred to Stanford to support the Player Piano Project.