The Music Library

The Music Library today boasts one of the most significant music collections in the southeastern United States, maintaining holdings of more than 105,000 items—comprising works from the Western classical tradition as well as from other cultures—including some 65,000 printed books and scores and 39,000 sound recordings.

The collection’s greatest strength is in contemporary editions of music from the age of Jefferson; musical selections correspond with Thomas Jefferson’s catalog of 1783. The library's other strengths include the following:

• The collection of composer and musicologist Alfred Swan (1890–1970) contains his correspondence with prominent members of the Russian intelligentsia, including Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sergei Prokofiev, Pavel Chesnokov, and Alexandra Tolstoy. The collection also contains printed music scores, notes, photographs, press clippings, and typescripts of studies of Russian music.
• John Davidson’s (College ’66) gift of sound recordings of classical music adds considerable depth to the recorded sound collection, almost doubling its size.
• The scholarly materials acquired by Ernest Mead, the Music Department chair who tirelessly sought and acquired many of the scholarly materials for the library.

The Music Library needs funds for building and maintaining the collection and services.