Library and Information Services, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland

Sunday 3 June 2018

Piano Pedagogy - Learn Like Emily Bronte

Did you know that you can look at historical piano teaching materials in the libraries that hold legal deposit collections?  Nowadays, there are a handful of big national and university libraries in the UK that still receive one copy of everything published, under statutory legislation.  But there are other libraries - especially in Scotland - that also received this material, until the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign.

Theodore Latour was pianist to King George IV - Victoria's uncle.  He taught, played and composed, and also wrote some piano tutor books.  See a quick 90-second videoclip about him, here.



It's possible to find copies of some of Latour's works online via Google Books, IMSLP or Archive.org, so if you're interested, we could help you source them.

And yes, Emily Bronte had music by Latour in her collection.  How do we know?  There's a book by Robert K. Wallace that tells us so!  (Emily Bronte and Beethoven: Romantic Equilibrium in Fiction and Music).  We don't have this book, but could get it on inter library loan if any of our readers were interested.

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