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Errant thoughts on some rare items in the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library.

Article Excerpt
By way of an introduction to the specialized articles that follow in this issue, I shall attempt to sketch a general picture of the founding and early evolution of the music library at the University of California, Berkeley, with emphasis on its relationship to the music department, then go on to some of the library's holdings.

Let me begin by celebrating some of the human treasures responsible for the chain of events leading to the dedication of the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library on 26 September 2004. A major figure in that chain is Albert Elkus (1884-1962), longtime chairman of the music department. Elkus was a native of Sacramento who received his bachelor's degree with a specialty in music from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1907. He studied piano abroad with Josef Lhevinne (1874-1944), then returned to California to teach at the San Francisco Conservatory, Mills College, and finally at Berkeley, where he became chair of the music department in 1935. A banner year that! For it was the same year in which pianist Jean Gray took the bachelor's degree with a major in music. In 1941, Elkus appointed Manfred Bukofzer (1910-1955), a refugee from Germany and brilliant young medievalist, to the music faculty. Bukofzer moved quickly to start a doctoral program in musicology. In 1946, Bukofzer became a full professor, and a year later persuaded University Librarian Donald Coney to appoint Vincent Duckles (1913-1985), one of Bukofzer's doctoral students, to a new position overseeing the development of collections and library services in the field of music. The university had long collected materials pertaining to music, and had received many valuable musical gifts too, while Elkus had wisely begun the important task of subscribing to composers' collected editions and Denkmaler, but there had never been a specialist appointed to coordinate all these functions and build a music collection for the future. Under the aegis of Bukofzer and Coney, Duckles began acquiring the comprehensive collection of musical scores and books on music needed to support an advanced program of musical scholarship, and also the rare items that could nourish new research. In 1955, an unexpected stroke of fortune made available for sale an eleventh-century plainchant codex reputed to be the missing Wolffheim Antiphonal. Bukofzer authenticated it, and recommended its purchase to Coney, which Duckles negotiated in the fall of 1955. With a single stroke, the Berkeley music library was on the map. This was but the first of many musical treasures acquired by Duckles, especially during the 1960s, when market conditions were most favorable to clever buyers. Alas, Duckles's...

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