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In Tune with Michael Bublé?

Bublé

One of the most frequent questions I’ve been asked about the ‘In Tune’ exhibition is: ‘Why Michael Bublé?’

The simple answer is that we received the printed score of Michael Bublé’s latest album ‘To be loved’ through legal deposit in July last year, and because of its high profile at the time it was an obvious choice to illustrate the range of our music collections. The earliest item in the exhibition is the ‘Canterbury Pontifical’, a liturgical manuscript believed to date from the last decade of the 11th century. The inclusion of a popular item from the second decade of the 21st century therefore justifies the exhibition’s claim to represent ‘a millennium of music in Trinity College Library’.

The question implies that somehow Michael Bublé doesn’t quite belong in the display. The item is included in the section headed ‘Collection Expansion’, which deals with two key developments in the growth of our music collections: the purchase of Ebenezer Prout’s music library in 1910, and the application of the legal deposit provision to music scores.

Though the Library was entitled to claim printed music under the legal deposit privilege since 1801, it actively declined to do so until the last decades of the nineteenth century. After this policy was reversed, large quantities of sheet music were received, much of it popular in nature. Whatever judgements are made about its musical merit, the value of this material is now recognised for what it reveals about the social attitudes, political concerns and popular tastes of its time. Many of the covers also show changes in how popular musicians are perceived: the performer associated with the work is often given much greater prominence than the composer.

In Tune, sponsored by KBC Bank, runs until 1 April 2014.The exhibition is also available online. Full details of the accompanying lecture and concert series are available here.

Roy Stanley – Music Librarian