Many thanks to VentnorBlog reader, Fazioli for sharing this piece of history about the wonderful musical resource that is held at Ventnor Library. It came up in a ‘conversation’ surrounding Edward Elgar. Ed
Victor Fleming’s ‘vast’ collection donated
When the late Mr Snow was librarian at Ventnor in the 60s and 70s, Victor Fleming the famous musician who retired to Honeythorne on the seafront (other oldies will remember this was the house that used to have metal railings in the shape of music staves with quotes from Wagner and Schubert on) donated his vast private collection of sheet music and books to the library.
Second donation from Head of Music at Upper Chine
Then shortly afterwards, the widow of the Head of Music at Upper Chine donated all her husband’s vast private collection.
Then the Island library Service decided to locate all the music books in the Island libraries to Ventnor as well. This was all because of Mr Snow’s passion for music.
“The stack”
Mr Snow, musical Ventnorians will remember, was an organist and organiser of the recorded music society that met at the library. He was also one of the first people on the Island to get an open university degree. Mr Snow then dedicated his spare time to cataloguing all the music and it is upstairs in the library and in the room called “the stack”.
When he retired, the work of cataloguing continued with a young graduate musician librarian who had studied music at Colchester in the early 90s. There were sets of choral music, orchestral music, lots of piano music and all the standard music books including a complete set of Groves.
Musical holidaymakers
Musical holidaymakers spread the word after mention of it appeared in the Incorporated Society of Musicians’ Music Journal.
Sadly Ventnor library was not allocated even a penny to spend on that part of the library – to such an extent that when the light fitting needed replacing in the mid-90s it took the then librarian about six weeks to get it replaced and I remember straining to read a book one winter afternoon.
Over the years I’ve noticed they’ve sold off a lot in their occasional sales (because they looked a bit grubby I suppose) without even realising how important and rare some of the books were that places like university music libraries could have made good use of.
“Unpublicised treasure”
This is an unpublicised treasure. If you are a musician, ask the librarian if you can have a browse up there.
