Out with the old, in with the new

A new set of timpani for the SABC Music Library.

By Suzette Lombard,  Principal Music Librarian

The SABC Studio Orchestra with conductor Theo Wendt,
taken in the old SABC studios in Commissioner Street in 1952

Most classical music instruments are made to last, and some do last a lifetime. Many of the instruments in the Library were purchased in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s of the previous century, when the SABC still had its own symphony orchestra.

Some instruments are still working hard, as a lot of regular library clients will be able to testify!

An old Ludwig timp which is being written off

A few of the older timpani or kettle drums have been repaired, overhauled and serviced countless times, but have now finally earned some rest. They will be replaced by a new set of Yamaha concert timpani bought recently.

A new Yamaha timp in its light-weight custom-made transport case

Related posts:

New Yamaha Grand Piano

Acquisition in the SABC Music Library - Paiste Crotales

New Yamaha grand piano

By Suzette Lombard
Principal Music Librarian

Unfortunately even well-made pianos don’t last forever, and in 2012 the SABC Music Library had to say goodbye to one of our collection of pianos, of which the frame had cracked. 

Fortunately we were able to acquire a brand new Yamaha C5 grand piano to replace it.

Yamaha is the world’s largest manufacturers of musical instruments, and has been making pianos since 1897. This piano is a great example of the dedication, vast knowledge, skill and hard work that go into making a modern day concert standard piano. Not only does it have to have a good sound and excellent mechanical action to please even the most demanding pianist, but it also has to look beautiful and be strong and rugged, in order to withstand the constant moving and handling.
A combination of traditional craftsmanship and advanced acoustical technology has made this possible. 

We are looking forward to this beauty’s first performance. 


Photos taken last week Wednesday at the arrival of the new piano.

The Music Librarian looking on

Suzette Lombard

(Photos by Karen du Toit)

Musings in the Music Library #9 - Budgets

by Daniel Neal
Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library


A vignette from the music librarian.

O tempora, O mores!  What we could do if we only had more budget!  

Artscape is now saying they may “renovate” the Library.  Well, they mean the room it’s in.  Considered old, ugly, dissheveled and antiquated (all true), the general upgrade of the entire Artscape Theatre Complex has now noticed another problem to be solved.  Motive?  To make it look modern and impressive, mostly.  

So a budget begins a theoretical dance, beyond my reach; a budget that if given to me would have a very different outcome.  

Like, maybe a full or even part time assistant?  Or lots of new score and parts sets?  

At least I’ve accessed the atmosphere by getting fifty archive boxes with which to re-box all the ballet sets and further to that other outsized local creations (quasi A4 sized parts and scores with huge plastic comb binders…an interesting challenge to fit into any storage facility).  

And look, let’s admit it is wonderful to have real interest in improvements.  

There have been so many retrenchments and closures in the last 18 years that I can drop my suspicious nature for a moment and really be grateful. 

Related posts:

Musings in the Music Library - "Librarians are nice" 

Musings in the music library #7 - Librarian stereotypes

Musings in the Music Library #6 - Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library

Musings in the Music Library #7 - Librarian stereotypes

Daniel Neal from the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library sent some more vignettes to the SABC Music Library, and gave his kind permission for us to publish.

"In 2004 I was playing for the first SA production of Phantom of the Opera and as such I was privy to lots of comments from the conductor and production team.  They had reservations about one of the girls cast as Christine, the character that is sweet and totally innocent and more than totally devoted to music, but underneath has a sensual and passionate romantic streak.      

They said more than once that this actress didn’t really display the latter, and their repeated comment was “she’s too much like a librarian”.  

I was by then three years the CPO librarian, and I didn’t take that too kindly.  But it is true that librarians, even of the orchestral kind, are subject to an occupational stereotype that is probably universal.  Why?  

Perhaps it is that our occupation is one of almost complete service?  If you consider what we do in general, it’s that we provide, upon request, materials, information and advice, without a transactional fee being attached.  It’s as far removed from sales and marketing as Cape Town is to Alpha Centauri."  

Related post: 

Musings in the Music Library #6 - Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library

Musings in the Music Library #6 - Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library

The last in a series of vignettes which were sent by a fellow librarian, Daniel Neal from the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library in a mail to the SABC Music Library and the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra Library.

"In the old days, orchestra libraries were there first and foremost to supply Their Orchestra with the materials required.  All other orchestras were viewed with deep suspicion and mistrust, and educational and amateur organizations with outright anathema.  

These deep feelings had practical roots beyond personal spites and jealousies: lost parts, horrible indelible markings and long term amnesia regarding return of material do not make life easy nor do they assist in looking after what is a very valuable investment.  

But times change, and the modern age in South Africa has now established a new attitude:  all these libraries were funded by public money and their collections should be open to all worthy users.  That has included the University orchestras and the few and valiant amateur orchestras, but the main benefactors from this Library have been the East Cape Phil in PE and the Free State Symphony in Bloemfontein,, occasional but professional institutions that don’t have libraries at all.  

The rental fee from this Library is unchanged from 20 years ago, and so the cost is within the budgets of our colleagues; without the Library’s assistance live orchestral performance would be even less frequent than it is."

Related posts:

Musings in the Music Library #5: Copyright 

Musings in the Music Library #4 - Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library


Musings in the Music Library #3 - Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library

Musings in the Music Library #2 - Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library 

Musings in the Music Library #1

Musings in the Music Library #5 - Copyright

Another vignette in a series that was sent by a fellow librarian, Daniel Neal from the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library in a mail to the SABC Music Library and the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra Library.

"Copyright is for the protection of the creator, an esoteric subdivision of legalities that makes Peace in the Middle East quite straightforward by comparison.  

As an introduction, South Africa and Canada recognize copyright as Death (of the creator, author, composer etc) plus Fifty years.  The European Union is now Death + 70, and the United States, in some applications and from certain dates, is Death + 90.  Even if you are a South African entity (like CPO) and you want to hire something out of copyright in South Africa for performance in South Africa, you may have to pay copyright because the Country of Origen of the Hired Material has a longer post-death law in place.  After this, it gets really complicated.  

For those audience members who despair at the relative lack of “modern” (that is, post 1930) music in concert programmes, I do ask that they judge CPO not too harshly.  

At time of writing the average fee for hiring copyright music is R300 per performance minute plus VAT plus Air Freight (usually from the UK), and that is just too expensive.  

Even if all the composers considered are long passed away, their publishing heirs can price their works right off the concert platform."

Related posts:

Musings in the Music Library #4

Musings in the Music Library #3

Musings in the Music Library #2

Musings in the Music Library #1

Acquisition in the SABC Music Library - Paiste crotales

The SABC Music Librarian, Suzette Lombard, of the SABC Music Library, wrote this short piece on the acquisition of Paiste Crotales in the music library:

The Music Library recently acquired a new set of 30 Paiste crotales, ranging from C6 (8va above middle C) to F8. These swiss-made music instruments are small, chromatically-tuned brass disks which have a clear and sustained, bell-like sound.

Crotales are also known as antique cymbals, as they have been used in some form or other since ancient times, often as smaller finger cymbals struck together by dancers. At present they are usually struck with hard mallets, or played with a bow, which produces an eerie sound similar to a glass-harmonica.


Composers such as Claude Debussy, Joseph Schwantner and Igor Stravinsky have used it to great effect in their compositions. In 1970, Karlheinz Stockhausen used it extensively in his composition Mantra, written for two ring-modulated pianos, wood blocks and two sets of specific crotales. In popular music, Mike Oldfield also uses crotales in Clear Light on his album Tubular Bells ll.

Musings in the Music Library #4 - Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library

Fellow librarian, Daniel Neal
- from the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library in a mail to the SABC Music Library and the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra Library:

"The standard title of where I work is the CPO Library, although this is for convenience.  What was the CTSO collection is owned by the Cape Orchestra Trust, and what was CAPAB’s still belongs to Artscape.  

The CTSO part is one of the oldest collections in South Africa, dating from 1913 the founding year of the Cape Town Municipal Orchestra, whereas CAPAB didn’t start their collection until 1971, when the Artscape building was finished.  But the antiquity of the CTSO collection is not just from purchases beginning from 1913.  

There are many score and parts sets that are much older; undocumented and impossible to ever discover their origins, I just speculate on how they ever got here. Even more, for some repertoire, why:  there are works here that never were popular enough to justify purchase.
 
My favorite to date are the Symphony no. 3 and the Cello Concerto of Joachim Raff, both unopened, unmarked and unplayed sets, first editions dating from around 1875.  

The stories of how and why they got from Berlin to Cape Town are long lost now, but nonetheless intriguing."    

Part of a series of posts.



Related posts:

Musings in the Music Library #1

Musings in the Music Library #2 - Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library

Musings in the Music Library #3 - Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library

Musings in the Music Library #3 - Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library

Another vignette in a series which was sent by  fellow librarian, Daniel Neal from the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library, in a mail to the SABC Music Library and the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra Library:

An orchestra library is not a place of research or reference, although it does have certain capacities in that medium.  

I’ll get an email from some unknown in Australia who is looking for data concerning their great grandfather who played double bass in the Cape Town Orchestra in the 20s…or was it the 30s?  Can I provide them with anything?  And I can’t, unfortunately.  

To a lesser extent I will be asked for recordings of certain works, and very rarely some musicological question (although Google and Wikipedia seem to have taken up a lot of this in the last ten years).  

In essence the Library is there to provide scores and parts for specific performances.  

The easy bit is to pull the file boxes off the shelves and load the parts folders.  The hard bit is to find, somehow and with limited budget, musical material that the Library doesn’t have!"

Related posts:


Musing in the Music Library #2 - Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library 

Musings in the Music Library #1

Musings in the Music Library #2 - Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library

The following vignette was sent by a fellow librarian, Daniel Neal from the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library in a mail to the SABC Music Library and the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra Library:

"The CPO Library is a rather complex entity, a partially combined form of what had been the CAPAB Library and the CTSO Library that was a result of the merger in 1997 of the then two orchestras of Cape Town.  

Each collection was (and still is) catalogued in its own manner and wasn’t (and still isn’t) cross-indexed.  

On taking up the post of Orchestra Librarian in April 2001 I was immediately lost and often plagued with questions of availability that I was unable to answer; the worst of these coming from people who wanted to know if I had such and such an aria from such and such opera.  Or worse, often a query stated as “you know, THAT aria, for a tenor, I think… maybe Verdi?”  

As it was not quite Hell, but bordering on it, I thought it appropriate to put up a few lines in the plaque that is on the front door.  In Italian, for the benefit, mostly, of those who need arias by yesterday, the lines are from the Divine Comedy. As Dante passes through the gate of Hell, he sees an inscription, the final line of which is the famous phrase

“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate”, or “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here”.  

To date, not one of the opera aria demanding sorts have ever noticed this, let alone considered and commented upon it."

Related post: 
Musings in the music library #1

Musings in the Music Library #1

Daniel Neal, fellow librarian at the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library.

The following vignette was sent by Daniel Neal from the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra Library in a mail to the SABC Music Library and the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra Library:  

"Library collections such as the ones we shepherd are full of stories both practical and mysterious, and their atmospheres are permeated with that musty tinge of stories long gone and never to be recalled.  
Even more so with the three of us, as all three libraries have not come from an unbroken tradition and place of worship nor have we spent our acolyte apprenticeships at the feet of revered Masters who passed on Tradition and Knowledge.  
Coming into this room of mine is sometimes like disturbing a gathering of ghosts who mutter an inaudible and foreign language; I can catch the odd word but miss the grammar entirely.  
I occasionally go beneath the practical and take out some old Elgar score, unplayed for 80 years, and hold it in my hands as if it might speak of musical meanings and events long gone.  
And of course it remains unintelligible, whispering though it does..."

A regular posting of these musings to follow.