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Finance News |
First person singular: notes on a scandal
Sunday, February 06 13:05:38
The great sheet music sell-off is a national scandal, writes Charlotte Phillips
A few weeks ago, I went to a table-top sale. What was unusual was the venue, the grass bank outside my local library in an affluent south-west London borough, and the stock: hundreds of music scores, many now out of print.
A 19th-century copy of Elliott's National Nursery Rhymes? A bargain at 70p. A complete set of Haydn's string quartets? Just £4.
Similar sales are taking place round the country as libraries dispose of what Kathryn Adamson, the president of the UK and Ireland branch of the International Association of Music Librarians (IAML), describes as "a national treasure" – the collection of music books and scores built up during the early part of the 20th century in the UK's public libraries.
Sheet music is vanishing with the blessing of local authorities. One informed estimate puts as high as one in three the number of libraries that have either reduced or eliminated their music collections over the past 20 years.
This estimate mirrors the sharp decline in specialist music staff. Pam Thompson, a past president of IAML, says that in 150 authorities there are only 43 professional music librarians, while in Scotland and Wales, "you can count the music librarians and collections of any note on the fingers of one hand."
Horror stories abound. The collection in the Henry Watson Music Library in Manchester, including original manuscripts by Handel and Vivaldi, was almost split up, although it was reprieved when the plans became public. But the smaller-scale disposals go largely unnoticed.
The problem seems to be that sheet music no longer fits with the way libraries are run. Stock increasingly has to "pay its way". At its most basic level, that covers DVDs, CDs and videos (which brought in more than £24 million in 2002-03).
But an item of stock can also be deemed to earn its keep if it is sufficiently popular with the public. Many libraries use sophisticated software to track borrowing patterns, making it all too easy to see which stock lacks shelf appeal. Judged on this basis, sheet music, inevitably a minority interest, will always be the loser.
For some people, sheet music appears not just peripheral but elitist, too. But what about children studying for their Associated Board grade exams, students busking to supplement grants, organists who want a particular piece for a wedding or funeral? To buy scores – in any format – is prohibitively expensive because of relatively small print runs.
Mike Drinkwater, now a session musician and arranger, was a child prodigy whose violin concerto, written when he was 16, was performed at County Hall in London in 1980. By the age of 12, he had passed all his cello and piano grade exams and wanted to be a composer.
Three years later, he was visiting his local library in Peckham up to four times a week to borrow scores and records to study at home. The loans were free. Without the library, he doesn't think he would have won his place to read music at Cambridge.
For those studying music at a serious academic level, it is essential to have access to physical scores. Listening to music while you follow a score brings an entirely new dimension to your understanding of a piece. And while plans have been mooted to put major library resources online, you can't leaf through a 200-page orchestral score on your PC in the same way as you can one in your hands.
It need not be too late to reverse the trend: official backing for sheet music in libraries would help, and IAML wants the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to give music a different status to books. But there is some way to go.
Ominously, the most recent set of Public Library Service Standards published by the DCMS in October last year not only makes no separate reference to music but appears to require that, like books, scores should be "replenished" every 6.7 years, a wholesale clearance that makes little sense and paves the way for music to decline still further.
The message to music-lovers is clear. Borrow now, while stocks last.
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