Music all year round
Music month is at an end for 2022. We've had a ball. Luckily for us music is a year round occupation. Here's a quick run down of the wide range of music resources we offer starting with a nod to NZ Music Month as we bid it adieu.
New Zealand Music Month
An annual celebration of New Zealand Music and one we are always excited to be part of, be it, events, blogs, or the Turnbull mix tape. There are lots of resources about New Zealand Music Month and we look forward to celebrating again next year. If you want to know about the history of NZ Music Month you can read it on nzhistory.net and to find out about NZ Music Month events, news and stories have a look at the NZ Music Month website
‘Music is life itself.’ — Louis Armstrong
Music collections at the Library
It is our pleasure to be be working with NZ music not only for a month a year but all year round. We do this with our collecting and collections work and we do this so we can offer a wide range of resources for music researchers and musicians. This includes the heritage collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library, reference and interloan material, and the Music Hire service.
Our main music collections include the Archive of New Zealand Music, a Reference collection and General Lending Collection. You can find out all about these on our Music collections and services webpage.
The New Zealand Music, Sound, Audio-visual Collection forms part of the New Zealand and Pacific Collection of the Alexander Turnbull Library. New items are added through legal deposit, purchase and donation.
As well as publications, recordings, sheet music, original scores, and the archives of musicians and composers, the Alexander Turnbull Library holds thousands of images of music subjects. A curated selection of images can be found in the Pictures of musical note online exhibition.
Archive of New Zealand music
The world's largest archive of unpublished material relating to New Zealand music and musicians, the Archive of New Zealand music, is held in the Alexander Turnbull Library. The Archive contains hundreds of unique collections that document the rich variety of our musical life, including the work of composers, singers, musicians and ensembles, record labels and other music organisations, music educators, broadcasters,musicologists and critics.
Columbia Records :Maori music. Columbia new process records; electric recording without scratch, (1920-30s). Ref: Eph-B-PHONO-Covers-1930-01. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Medieval manuscripts
One of the treasures of the Turnbull collections is a treatise on music from the 12th century. This medieval manuscript, the oldest complete manuscript held in a New Zealand collection, includes the works of two authors bound together: De musica by Boethius, and a collection of four works by Guido of Arezzo. You can read our research guide about the manuscript on the National Library website and you can also view the digitised manuscript.
Other manuscript treasures can be found in the Lowe family dance manuscripts Collection. Included in this wonderful collection are two very early dance manuscripts that have been digitised — Kellom Tomlinson, ca 1693-ca 1750 — Work book (A small treatise of time and cadence in dancing) and T B — Dance book
Image: Leaf from Boethius’ De musica,
Diagram of musical instruments and woman tuning a harp from Boethius’s De musica, MSR-05, ff.14r and 77r. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Turnbull mixtape
Since 2012 Turnbull staff have compiled an annual Music Month mixtape which highlights some of the new music archived the previous year and released with a CC licence. You can read about the mixtapes in our blog and also listen to a collection of 780 music items with a creative commons licence archived by the Turnbull Library.
Music hire service
You can hire music from the National Library. The Library holds the largest collection of musical performance material in New Zealand.
The music hire collection includes the substantial collection donated in 1987 by Radio New Zealand. We can offer over 5,000 orchestral sets, 3,000 choral sets, and a number of band sets for hire.
National Youth Orchestra, 11 May 1959. Ref: EP/1959/1654-F. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Piano room
The Turnbull Library has two upright pianos in its piano room, Douglas Lilburn’s August Förster, and a Toyo.
You’re welcome to use the room to practice other instruments or voice as well.
Learning resources
The National Library Services to Schools team have compiled very useful links to music resources, in a wide-range of formats, that can be used by students, teachers and general researchers including sets about New Zealand music and Māori music and performance
DigitalNZ
You can access over 30 million digitised items from over 300 organisations on www.digitalnz.org. A search on “music” will return over 960,000 hits! Included are images, radio broadcasts and historic newspaper articles. You will also find music-related stories curated by DigitalNZ users — stories such as this one about rock and roll, and Zokoroa’s celebrating the ukelele.
Music blog posts
The National Library website includes many music blog posts that give insights into the music collections and services available. Among many other music related topics, you can read about the Flying Nun project, the Peter Downes and John Cousins collections, the history of Pokarekare ana, and many more fascinating music topics
Public History talks
Listen again to the stimulating Public History talks hosted by the Ministry for Culture & Heritage and recorded at the National Library of NZ. In Music Month 2019, Associate Professor Inge van Rij looked at the position of women in orchestras at the turn of the 20th century in New Zealand. In May 2018, Dr Aleisha Ward talked about New Zealand’s jazz age.
Audio tour of Pūkana
The exhibition Pūkana: te ihi, te wehi, te wana was held in the National Library Gallery in 2019. It explored the whakapapa of Māori performance and performers across time and genres.
As part of the exhibition we created an audio tour with co-curator Paul Diamond. Paul takes us through the themes and stories in the exhibition celebrating moments in Māori performance. The audio is fully transcribed and a wonderful resource for researchers of Māori perfomance and performers.
Digital stories with links to Pūkana can be found on Digital NZ. These stories by Dr Michael Brown (Curator Music at the Turnbull) celebrate waiata Māori. You will also find other stories relating to haka and waitata on the site. Here are some examples.
Lilburn Research Fellowship
This biennial fellowship, offered in conjunction with the Lilburn Trust, encourages scholarly research leading to publication on some aspect of New Zealand and music, using the resources of the Archive of New Zealand Music and the wider published and unpublished collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library. The Lilburn Research Fellow also has access to the general collections of the National Library, as well as online resources.
You can learn more about the Trust and apply for the fellowship through the Lilburn Trust website.
Another collaboration with the Lilburn Trust is the annual Lilburn Lecture. These lectures are archived and available to listen to on the Lilburn Trust website.
AudioCulture website
AudioCulture is “the noisy library of New Zealand music” an online celebration of the people who have created the music, the scenes they shaped, and the audiences to whom they played. The National Library of New Zealand is a partner in AudioCulture.
On AudioCulture, visitors can read about people, music labels and articles. You can also listen to music (via Spotify and Soundcloud), watch music videos (via NZ On Screen and YouTube), listen to interviews and performances (via Radio New Zealand National), view images (photographs, posters, hand-written song lyrics and more), and browse discographies.
Digitised music scores
The National Library has digitised almost 350 pieces of sheet music from the 19th and early 20th centuries. They include many examples composed during World War I. The digital scores include both images of the pages and a downloadable PDF, so that you can print and play them at home!
To browse these scores, see the Heritage Sheet Music on the National Library catalogue, or browse via Digital NZ.
Lilburn’s Aotearoa Overture
For NZ Music Month’s 20th anniversary on 1 May 2020, the Turnbull Library made available online the original score of New Zealand’s most iconic orchestral work — Overture: Aotearoa by Douglas Lilburn.
Composed in London 80 years earlier to celebrate the New Zealand Centenary, the Overture expressed Lilburn’s deep feelings for his native country. We have made the digitised score open-access both in recognition of these two anniversaries.
Philip Hereford and Frank Crowther, Lovelight (1921). Ref: Music Box HER Lov 1921
Music resources at other organisations
Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision has a wonderful collection of music films.
NZ On Screen showcases New Zealand film, television, web series, and music videos. Among other treats you can watch the Give it a whirl series celebrating New Zealand rock & roll, and 1720 profiles of musicians and composers.
Music stories and performances on the RNZ music page
There are lots of fascinating articles on NZ music in many genres and through history on Te Ara: the online encycopedia of New Zealand
Get in touch with your music research questions
As we bid adieu to NZ Music Month we look forward to helping researchers and muscians throughout the year.
Get in touch with your music question using our Ask a librarian service.
Lydia and William Williams with their banjos, Carlyle Street, Napier, ca 1890, by Edgar Richard Williams. Ref: 1/1-025685-G. Alexander Turnbull Library.