This is an installment in a multi-part series.
Located on the first floor of Voxman Music Building is a library with large glass windows. Sunlight streams from the panes of glass, illuminating students and faculty reading and working from manuscripts, sheet music, journals, and more — all of which can be found in the Rita Benton Music Library.
Upon entering the library, viewers are greeted with a mini exhibit, which accompanies the James Dixon exhibit in the Main Library. The music library’s small exhibit “From the Desk of James Dixon: Joan Tower,” features an unpublished score titled “Composition for Orchestra (1967)” that Tower, a now Grammy award-winning composer, sent to Dixon for him to review along with a letter.
Viewers are also greeted by the stuffed animal Wülfie Parsons, a toy dog owned by late faculty member Donna Parsons, who died in 2018. The toy dog along with Monty, a black puma, sits on top of a shelf at the front of the library, accompanied by an information card.
The library was first located in the Eastlawn building’s basement from 1957 to 1972. Then the library moved to the former Hancher and Voxman complexes until the 2008 flood when it moved to the Main Library. It has been in its current location since 2016.
Director Katie Buehner said the hiring of Rita Benton in the 1950s played a role in the library’s growth. Benton, a pianist and researcher, was hired by the university in 1952 to do music cataloguing part-time.
“That is because music could be very difficult to get in those days,” Buehner said. “So putting a collection together that students could use, that faculty could use in their classes, was increasingly important.”
The collection consists of around 90,000 pieces of sheet music, around 50,000 books, 3,200 microforms, and 38,000 forms of media, according to the music library’s page. Some of these materials are housed in the Arthur and Miriam Canter Rare Book Room, including Buehner’s favorite work, the Processional (Cistercian rite) dating back to 1475-1500. Buehner said it was the oldest item in the library’s collection.
“There’s a large number of medieval music manuscripts at the main library in special collections and archives, but I wanted one in our music building so that I could show that to students without them having to trek down the hill,” Buehner said. “It’s a beautiful manuscript, but it’s also a hot mess in a lot of ways because there’s dirt, and it’s not completely bound, and it starts off really nice with illuminations and really fine work, and then kind of gets a little bit sloppy towards the end.”
One of her favorite aspects of working in the library was being able to purchase more music by Hancher’s composers-in-residence. Buehner said a lot of composers self-publish their works, so she will have to correspond with them directly to figure out how to acquire their music.
“It shows the investment the university is making and the experience for the students when they’re coming to campus,” Buehner said. “So, that’s been really fun.”
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In addition to books, the Rare Book Room also has a collection of Czech music cylinders collected by Edward Jedlička. Dating back to the late 1800s, librarian assistant Amy McBeth said they were the oldest Czech music cylinders recorded in the U.S. This information was confirmed by Radio Prague International in a 2019 article, and a presentation done by Buehner in 2020 alongside Filip Šír from the National Museum in Prague.
Buehner and McBeth also shared that there is an early edition collection of scores in the Rare Book Room by Ignaz Pleyel, an Austrian composer that Benton researched, and who Buehner said “was more popular than Mozart and Beethoven.” While the scores have been digitized, Buehner said it was still impactful to have the physical copies.
“It is available online, but it’s really cool to come in and actually work with the physical materials because scores were published a little differently in those days, and learning about how that process works out and what composers and publishers were doing, that adds to the richness of the research experience,” Buehner said.
His works are categorized with B numbers, which are numbers named after Benton used to catalogue sheet music. McBeth said those numbers differed from the library’s usual cataloguing system because the libraries on campus utilize the Library of Congress’ organizing system.
However, because the music library owns a lot of scores, sometimes they will use the name of the cataloguer.
According to the Library of Congress’ website, call numbers consist of three parts: the subject, any specific information about the book, and year of publication.
As viewers progress through the library, they can browse shelves of scores in the front of the library, and journals in the back. The music library also houses vinyl turntables, which music students use to listen to records.
The miniature exhibit in the front is not the only art to be found in the library. Suspended from the ceiling on the far end of the library is a green and gold glass sculpture made by artist Dale Chihuly titled “Forest, Amber & Gilded Chandelier.”
For Buehner, the best way to view it was from the second floor of Voxman. The chandelier aligns with the glass window on the second floor.
“When guests come to see the library, we’re always walking people down to show them the Chihuly because it’s just very, very pretty because we have these two, big huge windows which let in a lot of light, and it just kind of glances off that,” Buehner said.
She hoped that the library would inspire a sense of welcome and connection. Even though it was a small space, she encouraged people to walk through and view the library.
“We want people to feel welcome in the space,” Buehner said. “We want them to feel like they can come and they can study, they can ask questions, and that they can interact with music in ways that maybe they didn’t imagine.”