Ephemeral Music?: – The ‘Secondary Music’ Collection at the British Library

Abstract

During the 1880s, when for various reasons the intake of published music to the British Museum far exceeded the resources available to catalogue it, a decision was made to leave aside material thought to be ephemeral and of less importance. Known as the 'secondary' music collection, items continued to be added to the ever-growing pile well into the twentieth century, and despite the dedicated work of volunteers from the 1950s onwards, a vast collection of 'secondary' instrumental music from 1920–c.1985—some 69,000 items—remains completely uncatalogued. The primary motivation here is to provide an introduction so as to raise awareness of its existence, but also to give some impression of the many and various narratives that material such as this can contribute. Ultimately, while attitudes towards collections like this may have changed, the difficulty of dealing with them has not.

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