The Helen Hewitt Collection

Internationally renowned musicologist and organist Helen Hewitt was Professor of Music at the University of North Texas from 1942 to 1969. Upon her retirement, she donated a significant collection of organ music to the Music Library. A variety of additional important materials, mostly musicology-related, came to the library at the time of her death.

Numerous microfilms of Renaissance manuscripts and early prints, of which Dr. Hewitt once consulted the originals, are available for use in the Music Library by special arrangement. Many of her books, scores, and recordings enhance the general collection. A page of medieval chant manuscript and correspondence from many distinguished musicologists and organists such as Willi Apel and Jean Langlais are now part of the special collections.

Photographs of Dr. Hewitt are housed in the University Archives.

Legacies: Five Hundred Years of Printed Music, a conference honoring the quincentenary of Petrucci’s Harmonice musices odhecaton A, the accomplishments of Dr. Hewitt, and fifty years of the Ph.D. program at the University of North Texas, was held on campus in October, 2001.