News
Hallelujah!
The Bodleian Library winter exhibition, which opens this Friday (and runs until 29 April 2009), ranges over a thousand years of music making, especially celebrating four composers with anniversaries in 2009 – Purcell, Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn, all with links to the British choral scene. Local choral foundations and choral societies are also featured. Highlights from the Bodleian’s own collection include the 13th-century Worcester Fragments, Handel’s conducting score of Messiah, and autographs of Purcell, Mendelssohn, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Walton and Maxwell Davies. Eton College has lent the famous Choirbook, and the British Library its score of the Tallis 40-part motet, and autographs of Tippett (A Child of Our Time) and Britten (War Requiem). The exhibition has been curated by Peter Ward-Jones, outgoing Head of Music at the Bodleian. The exhibition will also feature as part of a future special edition of BBC Radio 3's The Choir, introduced by Stephen Darlington.
For further details of the exhibition, visit the Bodleian website. Admission is free.