There is a large quantity of piano and vocal scores of musicals from the 20’s 30’s 40’s and 50’s which were performed in Victoria.
The Bertha Jorgensen collection
Bertha Jorgensen was leader of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for many years. This collection is very important in the history of string playing and violin technique in Victoria as there is a direct line from Joachim ( Germany) and through Charles Manby who was one of the early violinists involved in teaching teachers and students in Victorian State schools. The fingering, bowing and editions are of particular importance to performers.
The ASTRA collection
This collection (mainly orchestra) is on permanent loan. Much of this music was chosen by George Logie Smith for the ASTRA orchestra. It is very heavily borrowed by schools and is a high usage section of the orchestral collection.
The Tait/ Percy Pledger collection
This consists of a large quantity of 1920’s and 1930’s music performed in Melbourne by radio and theatre orchestras. This we believe is half of the collection of the dance band music performed in Melbourne from 1920’s, 1930’s. and early 1940’s.
The Tait /Briglia collection.
This is another collection of 1920’s and 1930’s light orchestra collection which is to be received after consultation with the State Library of Victoria and will become the most complete collection of 1920’s and 1930's music for performance in a Victorian collection. This acquisition is waiting on the library becoming settled following its recent move to new premises.
Robbins - dance band set
This is one of only three complete dance band sets in Australia, and we believe the only set available in a music library at this stage.
The Canon
The library holds an almost complete set of this periodical magazine from the 1950’s and 1960’s which specialized in performance of music.
Young Talent Time collection
This collection contains approximately 5000 charts of professional arrangements of popular songs etc. performed for television in the 1970’s and 1980’s in Melbourne. These arrangements are valuable for the history of Victoria and television and, in addition, they are particularly suitable for a different style of performance material in Victorian Schools.
The Victorian Music Library is an active contributor to lists of the holdings of print music in the Union Catalogue of Music that circulates throughout Australia , which has been assembled by the Australian Music Librarians.
The VML staff work in co-operation with other music librarians involved in research and collections in Melbourne. The VML has the only copies of some of the serials which were being abstracted for the history of Victoria and the VML's staff worked in conjunction with the music section of the University of Melbourne Music Librarians so that indexing performers' work on these periodicals would assist the Centre for Australian Studies for researchers of Victoria’s heritage.
The VML has also assisted other libraries interstate have more complete collections where multiple copies were available.
