Library and Information Services, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Monday 26 September 2016

Lost Manuscripts

Lost Manuscripts

To be fair, a lot of people like new music, but there are enough of us old music enthusiasts to make this initiative thoroughly worthwhile:-
"The ambition of Lost Manuscripts is to build a union catalogue of manuscript fragments in the British Isles. The first stage is this pilot project which takes the Harsnett Collection housed at the University of Essex as its corpus." 
Find out more .... http://www.lostmss.org.uk/


Friday 23 September 2016

Free Choral Music - the Choral Public Domain Library

If you're a conductor or choral singer, then news of free choral music is a very good thing indeed!

Choral Public Domain Library (CPDL) is a choral wiki which is updated daily; it permits unrestricted downloads and no-edit viewing.

Our Performance Library Adminstrator says it's well worth a look!

Thursday 22 September 2016

UK Copyright - What Can I Copy?

Copyright - Keeping Things Legal

Here at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, we have a CLA (Copyright Licensing Agency) Higher Education Licence.  It allows you certain concessions as a student or staff member in a UK Higher Education establishment.  This document tells you what you're allowed to do:-

CLA Notice for Display

If you've never really thought about copyright before, or if you're from another country, you might find things are different to what you expected, so here's the UKCS (UK Copyright Service) summary of UK Copyright Law, which you might find it helpful:- 

Fact sheet P-01: UK Copyright Law

Monday, 26th September, 6 pm - Hear Our Brilliant Musicians!

It may be the September weekend in Glasgow, but we have just the event to enliven your Monday evening!  

The first of the Conservatoire's Exchange Talks takes place on Monday 26th September at 6 pm, with an illustrated talk about the music that might have been heard in Scotland in 1808 - the year of Beethoven's benefit concert.  (The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is reconstructing that concert - and at our own Exchange Talk, speaker Karen McAulay has been looking for other music being played at the time.)

Fiddler Bernadette Kellermann and cellist Wallace Calvert will share some traditional tunes.We also have mezzo-soprano Svetlina Stoyanova, pianist Jose Javier Ucendo Malo, cellist Marina Sanchez-Cabello, violinist Michelle Dierx and harpist Ewelina Brzozowska.

The event is free, but you do need a ticket - visit our Box Office to get one! 

Editing Robert Burns for the 21st Century - New Online Resource

The University of Glasgow has this week launched a great new resource about songs by Robert Burns. Editing Robert Burns for the 21st Century is an AHRC-funded Project to produce a multi-volume edition of the Works of Robert Burns. It's led by Kirsteen McCue,
Professor of Scottish Literature & Song Culture and Co-Director of the Centre for Robert Burns Studies in the Scottish Literature Department.


There's lots to explore.  It all started with this:- 

"The Centre for Robert Burns Studies at the University of Glasgow recently secured a major AHRC research grant to produce a multi-volume edition of Robert Burns’s work, which will be published by Oxford University Press. The project, ‘Editing Robert Burns for the 21st Century’, began in 2009, the 250th anniversary of the poet’s birth, and will take at least 15 years to complete."   Read more on the website!

http://burnsc21.glasgow.ac.uk/

Wednesday 21 September 2016

Do you Know any Young Musos from Kirklees?

Young Musicians! Are you from the Kirklees Metropolitan Area?

2017 Contest!

We received a leaflet from The Kirklees Young Musician of the Year Contest 2017.  It takes placed in Huddersfield on Friday 24 February 2017.  Entries must be submitted by 12 November 2015.

You must be aged 16-25, born or resident in the Kirklees area

More info at their website:- http://www.mrssunderlandfestival.com/

It's Library Tour Time at the Whittaker Library!


Have you visited us yet?  

This is the week when the library welcomes dozens of eager new music, drama, film and TV, ballet  and theatre production students.  

Our new students are warmly encouraged to come and hear about how we support our learners and their teachers.  There's a timetable by the door, but we usually run a couple of extra sessions the following week in case anyone missed out.

Has the library got a ghost? Well, you'll just have to visit us to find out! 

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Blog Artist Awards



We've just been informed about a great opportunity for artists, practitioners, students and freelance performance makers. Have you come across TDPT? (It stands for Theatre, Dance and Performance Training.) There's a TDPT Journal, and a TDPT Blog, but now it gets even better - there are TDPT Blog Awards too. We'll let the TDPT team tell you all about it: read on!
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The TDPT blog was launched last year to encourage a growing community of artists, academics, practitioners and researchers to share practice and debate issues that are currently alive within the disciplines of theatre, dance and performance training. In November to mark the one year anniversary of the launch of the site we will be launching a series of blog posts supported by the new TDPT Blog Artist Awards.

One of our aims was to engage a new audience for the TDPT journal while also creating an online space that encourages spontaneous and productive conversation and debate. We are grateful to everyone who has posted their work on the site to date and we are looking to further grow our network of artists, researchers and performance-makers. The blog currently has around 1000 visitors a month from around the world.

There's Cash!

We are keen to encourage artists, practitioners, students and freelance performance-makers to engage with the blog and are launching the TDPT Blog Artist Awards which aim to facilitate those not in full-time employment and students to be able to contribute to the site and the community. We have small pots of money (£50-150) to support artists who pitch an idea for a contribution to the site, either audio-visual, text-based or audio that disseminates an area of performer training that may be of interest to the wider community.
But You Have to Apply!

To apply, please write a short proposal (no more than 300 words) outlining your suggested submission, format and any media you intend to use. You should also include in your statement how you intend to disseminate your post to your networks and help build new audiences for the blog. Please email proposals to the blog editors:-



Monday 19 September 2016

Meanwhile in Scotland in 1808

On Sunday 2nd October, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is reenacting a benefit concert that was staged for Beethoven in 1808.  Details of event - click here.

But before that, on Monday 26th September at 6 pm there's going to be an Exchange Talk at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland  in the Ledger Room, to tie in with the 1808 theme.  Be prepared for an interesting auditory experience - we're playing music that may not have been played for nearly two centuries!

Actually, the pieces by Nathaniel Gow are the most commonly known! Concerto Caledonia performed them on their latest CD, Nathaniel Gow's Dance Band.  (We have it in the Whittaker Library).  But there's also an early Scottish song arrangement by Beethoven, a piano trio by Kozeluch, and a duet for harp and piano by Sophia Dussek.  Can you resist?

And this is what happens when music librarians get immersed in historical research!

Exchange Talks: Dr Karen McAulay- Box Office Link

Adrian Howells DVD Collection and new Publication now in library

The Whittaker Library has been chosen to be one of the few places in the UK to hold the collected video works on DVD of the late Adrian Howells who was a celebrated performance artist and a teacher at Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and at University of Glasgow.

Adrian Howells (1964-2014) was one of the leading, international figures in the field of one-to-one, intimate performance practice. Developed over more than a decade, Howells’ award-winning work initiated new challenges and innovations in performance art.   
Also recently purchased for the Library is a publication dedicated to his work  "It's All Allowed : The Performances of Adrian Howells". Co-published by the Live Art Development Agency and Intellect Books, as part of the Intellect Live book series. Edited by Deirdre Heddon and Dominic Johnson.

The publication is supported by Creative Scotland, Live Art Development Agency, Arts Council England, University of Glasgow, Society for Theatre Research, Battersea Arts Centre, National Theatre of Scotland, and Queen Mary University of London.


Click Link below:

Contents of the Adrian Howell's Collection

Future Histories: Exploring the History of Black Theatre in London

To celebrate Black History Month in October, cpd25 is pleased to invite you on a unique tour of Goldsmiths Special Collections. (Goldsmiths is part of the University of London.)  The tour will be led by archivist and library manager, Lesley Ruthven.

FUTURE HISTORIES is one of the first national repositories for African, Asian and Caribbean performing arts in the UK.  

Click on link below for more information:

Black Theatre History

Theatre Buildings at Risk Register 2016

You may be interested to know that just released is the 2016 Theatre Buildings at Risk Register.

Of the 36 theatres on the 2016 Register there are 6 new theatres: 3 in England, and 3 in Scotland – these include 3 theatres which have, sadly, returned to the Register.


Leith Theatre in Scotland has been placed back on the Register, despite tremendous work by the community group in securing a lease on the premises, due to the amounts of funding still required to secure its future.

Read the full story - click on link below:


Theatre Buildings at Risk Register 2016

Friday 16 September 2016

The History of the Whittaker Library in 3 images



Here we show you our library history in three images!  
  • Editor William Gillies Whittaker - early Principal of the Scottish National Academy of Music.  And now namesake of the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland!
  • Shelfmark XVI B.263 - literally, the number of the book in the box on the shelf in the old Athenaeum building.
  • Shelfmark M HAN 8:18 - the next way of arranging the music was by composer and then category. 8:18 must have been the 18th piece of operatic music in the Handel section!
  • M1508 H - we now use Library of Congress classification - an international arrangement.  All the separate arias are shelved together (M1508) and then subdivided by composer (Handel)
  • We've had several names: Athenaeum, Scottish National Academy of Music (stamped appropriately beside Whittaker's name, because this was our name when he was Principal!), Royal Scottish Academy of Music (see the date-label), then Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) and now Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.
  • It appears this music was first borrowed in 1968, and most recently, in 2014.  But bear in mind there could have been an earlier date-label before the score got its brown card cover!
  • Sadly, the music now seems to be falling apart, card cover or not.  RIP - Rest in Pieces.