Ragtime to riches : celebrating a musical legacy

Event Name Ragtime to riches : celebrating a musical legacy
Start Date 18th Jan 2012 5:00pm
End Date 18th Jan 2012 7:00pm
Duration 2 hours
Description

Divinity School and Convocation House, Old Bodleian Library 

‘Shabby old man leaves collection worth millions’, Chicago Tribune, 14 Dec 1973

‘Organist dies at 90 in Home Filled with Rare Sheet Music’, New York Times, 14 Dec 1973

‘Pauper’s Collection for Oxford Library’, New York Times, 18 Jan 1975

These were some of the newspaper headlines announcing Walter Harding’s legacy to the Bodleian Library.

Walter Newton Henry Harding was not an academic or a book dealer. He worked as a ragtime pianist in Chicago. Yet he was able to build an enormous collection of poetry and song, sheet music, and opera scores. His success as a book collector was partly due to the unfashionable nature of the material he was collecting: ephemeral, popular publications with little commercial value in the mid-twentieth century. 

From Jan. 7 to 29, a selection of items from the Harding Collection will be on display in the Proscholium, Bodleian Library. 

At the event on 18 January, Dr Abigail Williams (English Faculty) recounts the surprising history of how Harding’s collection came from the basement of his family home in Chicago to the Bodleian Library. Professor Michael Burden (Music Faculty) assesses the legacy of Harding in the Bodleian music collections.

The evening will include a short concert of music, performed by voice and violin duo, Alva.

Refreshments will be served.

Tickets free. E-mail - with Subject line: HARDING MUSIC - rsvp@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or phone 01865 277000 to reserve tickets.