Special Collections

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Maynard Ferguson

The Maynard Ferguson Collection at the UNT Music Library contains over 750 arrangements for Ferguson's bands from the 1950s to the early 2000s, and includes the work of arrangers such as Willie Maiden, Don Rader, Slide Hampton, Denis DiBlasio, and Steve Wiest, among many others. The collection also includes copies of published arrangements, and Thai and Indian music that Ferguson collected.

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McMurtry Microfilm Collection

Dr. William McMurtry (b. 1934) received his Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of North Texas in 1967. His dissertation, for which Dr. Helen Hewitt served as advisor, concerned the British Library's Ms. Additional 35087. He later edited a selection of chansons from this manuscript for publication in Recent Researches in the Renaissance and also edited the facsimile edition of it published by Musica Alamire. During his long career as a teacher, principally at Oklahoma State University, he presented papers at various conferences, performed as a baritone vocalist and served on the executive committee for the South-Central Renaissance Conference.

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Merrill Ellis

Merrill Ellis (1916-1981), founder of the electronic music program at North Texas, was active as an experimenter with the medium from the time he came to Denton in 1962. He persuaded Robert Moog, inventor of the synthesizer, to design and build another example of the instrument (the second one ever made) for him and his students to use. The current extensive computer music and intermedia program at North Texas is an outgrowth of his early foresight. This collection includes performance materials for all of the composer's works: tapes, cassettes, slides, films, instructions, masters, etc. Also included are tapes of historical importance such as the John Cage Lecture, the Roy Harris Informal Evening, and a tape of Ellis discussing plans for the new music building.

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Osborn Duke

Osborn Duke was a musician and writer who attended North Texas briefly in the '40s. His varied activities thereafter included performing as a sideman with a number of big bands, publishing short stories and a novel, writing screen plays, teaching English, and working with the Texas Office of Pardons and Paroles. All of these activities are represented in the materials that comprise the Osborn Duke Collection.

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Rheinhard Oppel

Initially acquired in 1998, the Rheinhard Oppel Collection contains the papers and compositions of Austrian composer Rheinhard Oppel (1878-1941). Fifteen boxes of manuscripts, correspondence, memorabilia, and photographs make up the collection. The manuscripts in the collection comprise Oppel's music and analyses. Also included are important materials relating to his work with the German theorist Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935), Schenker's analyses, and a letter from composer Franz Liszt.

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Richard Dufallo

Richard Dufallo, a champion of modern music, conducted interviews with a number of twentieth-century composers for his book Trackings: Composers Speak With Richard Dufallo. The core of the Dufallo Collection consists of the original interview cassette tapes on which Richard Dufallo captured his interactions with the composers. These tapes were donated to the Music Library by Dufallo's widow, Pamela Mia Paul, and transferred to compact disc in the fall of 2003.

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Ruth Negri

Ruth Negri, formerly second harpist with the New York Philharmonic, generously donated her collection of harp music to the Music Library at the University of North Texas. The collection consists of hundreds of harp parts and study books.

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Singing Eagles

A number of North Texas students have gone on to successful recording careers. The UNT Music Library has begun collecting recordings by some of these artists, and these recordings now comprise the Singing Eagles Collection. The collection is by no means a comprehensive record of commercially-successful North Texas musicians, but rather a growing document of some of the more prolific artists who have studied at North Texas.

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Source Magazine Archives

The archives contain materials submitted to the seminal avant-garde magazine Source during the years 1967-1973. They include both published and unpublished items. The collection was donated to the Music Library by Source editor Stanley Lunetta and UNT composition faculty member Larry Austin.

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Stan Kenton

World-renowned bandleader Stan Kenton bequeathed his entire orchestra library to the University of North Texas. The collection comprises more than 1,600 manuscripts, listed and described by Leon Breeden, representing the work of Kenton's famous arrangers including Bill Holman, Pete Rugolo, Robert Graettinger, and Bill Russo. The Stan Kenton Collection is supplemented by several hundred photographs of Kenton and his orchestra provided by publicist Noel Wedder.

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Virtual Music Rare Book Room

This site provides full-text image files of early music prints and manuscripts, most housed in the UNT Music Library’s Rare Book Room, and background information about those works.

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WFAA and WBAP Collections

These collections of more than 400,000 items include sheet music, published orchestrations, and original arrangements used by the studio orchestras of the oldest radio stations in Dallas and Fort Worth. Both collections are searchable online in the Special Collections Database or in the online catalog. Both provide access by composer, lyricist, arranger, song title, and motion picture or musical theatre title. Items in the collections are available for library use only during normal business hours, Mon.-Fri. For further information, please contact the Music Library (940) 565-2860. Please contact a music librarian if you are unable to come in during normal business hours.

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Whit Ozier Sound Archive

This collection contains 130,000 78 RPM recordings, principally of jazz and popular music, dating from the earliest days of recorded music through the 1950s; thousands of radio station transcription discs; and more than 100 cylinder recordings. Operating models of older types of playback equipment, such as an Edison cylinder player and an old Victrola, are also included in this collection. Access to the archive is provided by the Rigler and Deutsch Record Index. Originally a gift from Whit Ozier, the collection has been supplemented by additional gifts. One such gift from Anthony Tilmans was accompanied by a database of over seven thousand items from his personal collection. This database will soon be available via the UNT Music Library website.

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William P. Latham

Composer William P. Latham served on the faculty of the University of North Texas College of Music from 1965 until his retirement in 1984, at which time he was appointed Professor Emeritus. Throughout his extensive career, he taught both theory and composition. The website gives biographical information on Latham, excerpts from reviews, lists of his works, and contact information for obtaining copies of his scores. For a list of his works held by the UNT Libraries, please see his entry in the online catalog.

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Willis Conover

Willis Conover (1920-1996) was a jazz producer and broadcaster on the Voice of America for over forty years. He produced jazz concerts at the White House, the Newport Jazz Festival, and for movies and television. Conover is credited with keeping interest in jazz alive in the countries of eastern Europe through his nightly broadcasts during the cold war when jazz was banned by most of the communist governments. A 1997 gift of the Willis Conover Jazz Preservation Foundation, Inc., the collection consists of over 22,000 recordings of all kinds, correspondence, memos, magazines, record catalogs, manuscripts, program notes, memorabilia, photographs, books, and other personal items. Many of the recordings and books are being added to the regular collection, cataloged in the main on-line catalog, and allowed to circulate.

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