Professional Activities

Joseph Darby (Music) presented his recent research at a joint congress of the International Musicological Society and the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres. The congress “Music Research in the Digital Age” featured presentations by music scholars from around the world, and was held in June 2015 at The Juilliard School in New York City. Professor Darby’s paper “Publishing Music by Subscription in 18th-Century Britain” featured research he conducted at the British Library, Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library during his Fall 2014 sabbatical appointment. This project assesses the effectiveness of the subscription method in the music trade by combining online research (proprietary databases and public domain sites) with library and archival research in Britain and the U.S. to produce a substantial cache of information related to ca. 450 works published by subscription in eighteenth-century Britain, resulting in a comprehensive survey of factors that shaped the financial success of individual subscription publications, — pricing, genre, audience, year of publication, locale, terms and conditions of the subscription, reputation of the composer, and the participation of women in all aspects of the music subscription business. Other issues under consideration: “dropping the anchor” and the creation of value in music publishing, and estimating the value of the British pound in the eighteenth century compared to its value presently. Although publishing music by subscription accounted for a fraction of total music sales, the data from this study are useful for studying the economics and demographics of music publishing in eighteenth-century Britain.

Rodney Obien and Brantley Palmer received a $10,000 grant from the New Hampshire State Library for their NH Poet Laureate Preservation Microfilming Project. This award provides funds to archive and preserve the papers of four New Hampshire Poet Laureates: Marie Harris, Patricia Farnogli, Walter E. Butts and Alice B. Fogel.’This preservation project has been made possible through funds received from the sale of the New Hampshire Moose Conservation License Plate and administered by the New Hampshire State Library, a division of the New Hampshire Department of Cultural Resources.