Bate Collection of Musical Instruments
The Bate Collection of Musical Instruments is a collection of historic musical instruments, mainly for Western classical music, from the Middle Ages onwards. It is housed in Oxford University's Faculty of Music near Christ Church on St. Aldate's.
![]() ![]() Bate Collection of Musical Instruments | |
Established | 1968 |
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Location | St. Aldate's, Oxford, England |
Coordinates | 51.7488°N 1.2562°W |
Type | University museum of musical instruments |
Website | www.bate.ox.ac.uk |
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The collection is open to the public and is available for academic study by appointment. The current curator (November 2017) is Andy Lamb, a former NCO who served in the Royal Artillery and was a trumpeter in their Junior Leaders band during his training as a Boy Soldier. There are frequent gallery events and special exhibitions. More than a thousand instruments by important English, French and German makers, are on display, showing the musical and mechanical development of wind and percussion instruments from the Renaissance to the current day.[1]
The collection is named after Philip Bate[2] who gave his collection of musical instruments to the University of Oxford in 1968, on the condition that it was used for teaching and was provided with a specialist curator to care for and lecture on it.[3] The collection also houses an archive of his papers.
The Bate Collection is additionally the home of the Reginald Morley-Pegge Memorial Collection of Horns and other Brass and Woodwind Instruments; the Anthony Baines Collection; the Edgar Hunt Collection of Recorders and other instruments; the Jean Henry Collection, the Taphouse Keyboard Loans; the Roger Warner Keyboard Collection; the Michael Thomas Keyboard Collection; a number of instruments from the Jeremy Montagu Collection; a complete workshop of the English bow-maker William C Retford, as well as a small collection of Bows formed in his memory, the Wally Horwood Collection of books and recordings, and other instruments acquired by purchase and gift.[1]
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An album, 'Voices From The Past, Vol. 2: Instruments of The Bate Collection' was released in 2015.[4]
See also
References
- "A short history". The Bate Collection. Archived from the original on 2 February 2007. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
- "Places feature — The Bate Collection]". BBC Oxford. UK: BBC. 19 December 2006. (Dr Hélène La Rue tells how the collection's founder, Philip Bate, became involved in music.)
- La Rue, Hélène (2004). "Bate, Philip Argall Turner (1909–1999)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press.
- Desbruslais, Simon. "Voices from the Past, Vol.2: Instruments of the Bate Collection, Oxford". ClassicalArchives.com. Retrieved 29 December 2015.