A Traveling Glimpse of a Harmonious Future

MUSICIANS GO ON TOUR constantly, but, over the next year, their historic “tools”—books, antique musical instruments and artwork—will be stopping at selected venues across the country. According to Dean of Libraries Charles B. Lowry, the exhibit “contains some of the earliest, rarest, and most significant and valuable books in the history of music.”

Frederick R. Selch, the prominent scholar, writer, musician and collector, is seen here playing his cello at home in New York City, c. 1979.

The Legacy of Sebastian Virdung: Rare Books on Music & Instruments from the Collection of Frederick R. Selch (1930-2002) • Boston College, Burns Library: April 14 – August 15, 2005 • Duke University, Eddy Collection of Musical Instruments: September 17 – December 3, 2005 • University of Chicago, Special Collections Research Center, Joseph Regenstein Library: March 6 – June 15, 2006 • University of Maryland, Hornbake Library: August 21 – December 21, 2006

“The Legacy of Virdung” is an exhibit of books and related instruments that shaped the study of the history of musical instrumentation, inspired by Sebastianus Virdung’s Musica Getutscht. In 1511, Virdung crafted the first book dealing exclusively with musical instruments. It set the standard for all books of its kind that have followed in the long history of musicology.

This stellar exhibition of more than 100 books was hand selected by noted collector Frederick R. Selch in an effort to represent the evolution of musical instrument study. It includes books ranging from the Virdung of 1511, to Badger’s Illustrated History of the Flute (New York, 1861). The books on display, supplemented by historic instruments, prints and paintings, include some of the most important historical evidence we have of musical technique, theory and instrument design—“a gold mine of topics for discussion or research,” according to New York’s Grolier Club, America’s oldest and largest society for bibliophiles and enthusiasts in the graphic arts.

“People who have a chance to see this dazzling exhibition will get an idea of how important Selch’s whole collection is,” says Bruce Wilson, recently retired head of the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library. This project is only one facet of Selch’s vision of the Frederick R. Selch Collection. Selch’s much larger collection—spanning five centuries and containing nearly 800 instruments, 6,000 books, and some 500 prints, drawings, paintings of musical instruments, as well as a large body of collectibles—is unsurpassed in private ownership in the United States.

The collection, which is scheduled to arrive at the university near the end of 2006, draws from the fields of music, theater, dance, fine arts, history and ethnology to document the music of the Americas. It brings the entire workshop—bench, tools, plans—of William Whitely, a premier early American creator of wind instruments and much of the musical collection of 19th century actress and abolitionist Fanny Kemble and her composer husband.

Parts of the collection like Kemble’s, embody more than musical history. People studying abolition, drama or famous women will be drawn to closely study Kemble’s documents. Others will open the doors to handle instruments constructed in Colonial times. Still others will view Selch’s collection of iconographic paintings depicting early American musical scenes as historical works or art worthy of study.

Patricia Bakwin Selch offered this entire collection to Maryland in recognition of the university’s strength in performing arts and the existence of many other special collections already at Maryland, particularly within the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library. Her hope is to lay the foundation for a Center for the Study of American Music History, her late husband’s dream.

Lowry says, “It is so fitting for the Selch Collection to be at the university, located so close as we are to our nation’s capital. It will be all the more useful in its proximity to the other great institutions and collections.” —KA

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