The term popular music is extremely vague, covers a wide field of musical endeavour and ranges over a long period of time; there has been “popular music” ever since man made music for his own pleasure. The difficulty is to draw a distinction between serious or, less accurately, classical music and the other forms in existence, especially as much of the material in the popular field is taken quite seriously by many people. It might be preferable to call this type of music, light music. This term would effectively cover music of a more transient nature, which would not be expected to have a lasting appeal except to the most diehard adherents of a particular style or form. This is not to denigrate such music or to detract from its worth, for it is certainly as valuable in its own way as any other sphere of musical creativity. The area covered by the term light music is enormous, ranging as it does from folk music to heavy metal rock, operetta to jazz, country and western to big band dance music and film and Broadway musicals to current chart pops. It is difficult to place all these varying styles and numerous forms into any sort of comprehensible collection, and one that is retrievable and makes any sort of sense to library staff, researchers or users of any kind.
The BBC Popular Music Library is one of the largest of its kind in the world and has a system just like the one described. The library has well over a quarter of a million pieces of sheet music in a collection which has been built up since before the 2nd World War. The stock held by the library covers many forms: arrangements and orchestrations (there is a distinct difference) and which can be found in manuscript and printed form; song copies, vocal scores of musicals, operettas, and musical films; song albums featuring the collections of popular singers; bands, musical styles, or musical periods; instrumental pieces existing as solos or collections and a small collection of reference books. As you can see the cataloguing possibilities are almost endless and will present a myriad of problems. Arrangements and orchestrations alone arrive in many forms dependent on the size and style of band and orchestra. The BBC Popular Music Library systems are in fact tailor made, do not correspond with formal library cataloguing schemes and have in the past caused deep shock to visiting library students who have come to inspect us as part of their studies.
In addition to the previously mentioned stock, there is an extensive file collection which again has been tailor made over the years, catalogued in its own way and covering many aspects of the popular music field in an analytical way. Some examples of the subjects found in this collection and the ways in which they are put to use in programme making may clarify the points at issue. The file collection, incidentally, has been built almost entirely from newspaper and magazine cuttings taken from the fifteen or more periodicals received by the Popular Music Library each week over a period many years.
a) Biographies
There is an extensive biographic collection covering many personalities in the popular music field, ranging from musical actors to conductors, from singers to jazz musicians. These collections cover every kind of personality to be found in this sphere of musical activity.
b) Obituaries
The obituaries cover the same area as that of the biographies and are invaluable for determining the age of personalities when creating a programme about them. One is often asked how the radio networks manage to broadcast a complete programme on somebody immediately after they have died, having very little time to prepare it. The answer is that the basis of the programme was prepared before they died. There is a researcher employed in preparing programmes on eminent people who are approaching old age and these programmes are filed waiting for the inevitable to happen. Naturally the people in question are not told about this!
c) Musical and film reviews
These are culled from the various periodicals, which are taken by the library; however it is quite difficult to get satisfactory reviews of shows. Many of these are written in a flippant, uninformative manner even in the most serious of papers and contain little or no information on the item in question. Probably the best publication of all is the American trade paper “Variety”. Unfortunately, it does not cover the shows in Great Britain and Europe to any great extent; and London does appear to be one of the two great centres of theatrical activity, the other being New York. These files are subdivided to cover American and British productions and can also be found by year of premiere.
d) Analytical
This file collection divides songs by their subject matter. For example songs will be listed covering drinking or eating, songs about World War I or II, songs about horses or other animals, songs about London, about New York etc., songs about girls’ or boys’ names, songs about motoring or sailing; the list is endless. These files are invaluable when a producer wishes to build a programme with a specialist subject as its theme. Educational broadcasting is a good customer when it comes to this type of subject matter.
e) Song Histories
In certain circumstances the histories of the better-known standard songs are kept on file. Details list by whom they were written and when, what they were written for, perhaps a film theme or radio show, who sang them and so on. This kind of information is used for notes for a presenter to have something to say about the items in a specific programme.
There are other more obscure files in addition to those mentioned but this is a sample of the most widely used files.
With only two exceptions the Popular Music Library has catalogued everything in stock by title. This may seem a radical way of arranging things but in a large comprehensive collection such as this with its specialist use, the system is designed to suit the work patterns. Two main indexes are being introduced which cover the bulk of the stock plus a vast collection of song copies which are arranged alphabetically; thus creating their own index. The first main index covers the complete collection of arrangements and orchestrations in manuscript and printed form for various orchestras. This covers approximately 115,000 items which are all available and in current use. The material is arranged numerically on the shelves in bags as it is catalogued, the manuscript arrangements in one section and the printed ones in another. Because they cover a wide range of orchestral and band styles the only possible way to catalogue these items is by title. Naturally, most titles will have more than one arrangement and, therefore, in the index each individual title is arranged numerically.
There have been various collections of arrangements donated to the Popular Music Library from various sources, for example, eminent orchestra and bandleaders now retired or BBC regional orchestras and bands now non-operative. These collections have been catalogued and integrated into the main collection with information that these items are from alternative sources although absorbed into the main collection.
The other index includes song albums, vocal scores, piano and instrumental solos and selections and a separate indexed song collection. All the items listed in this catalogue itself are comprehensively annotated enabling the staff to pinpoint the location of each item.
The cards in both our main indexes contain selected information, which may include composer and publisher details, the orchestra for which a piece of music has been arranged, the date of composition, the copyright date, the key and the range of a vocal item, and any subsequent adaptations of the pieces.
Apart from these file collections the other sections of the library, which carry their own catalogue systems, are the reference books and the composer file section. This latter collection is based on eminent composers of popular music and contains completely indexed files of these composers’ works. This is a difficult collection to continue in as much as the problem exists of deciding which composers merit inclusion in what is essentially an archive. The obvious people such as Rogers and Hammerstein, George Gershwin, Lennon and McCartney, are easy to administer, their music is readily available and well documented. The lesser-known composers, especially those who are currently writing can be more problematic when deciding to create a file on their works. To decide on their inclusion, to obtain a list of their complete works, and then to obtain those works is quite an arduous task. The safest rule of thumb when in doubt about the merit of a composer is to include him in your collection.
The question of choosing or selecting the material to go into the library creates problems given the amount of popular music that is continuously published. The following section deals with the particular stock of the BBC Popular Music Library and indicates the criteria involved in acquisition of this material.
Arrangements: The collection of these depends entirely on the requirements of the broadcasting production departments. Production departments decide how much of their budget is available for new arrangements and then commission these through an orchestrations department. In this process the library receives the finished product and catalogues it. Library staffs are, therefore, not involved in an acquisition policy as far as this material is concerned, only to advise on material already in existence and avoid duplication.
Publishers’ Printed Orchestrations: The Library receives lists from publishers who issue this material, the bulk of which is now published in the USA, and decisions are made as to which of the titles would be useful for BBC radio bearing in mind the output of radio and the style of the arrangers or composers involved. Occasionally specific pieces are requested by production departments and ordered for library stock.
Song Copies: The top twenty songs from the British Charts are normally ordered as a matter of course although they are not always available in print. In addition, orders are made for any new songs which are thought suitable or have become popular by one means or another. Much of this material is supplied free of charge, although payments can also be made.
Song Albums and Vocal Scores: With these items, selection is made on the basis of what is considered to be suitable for the likely users of the library. This is not primarily an archive, and does not attempt to acquire everything in print. It is also very easy to duplicate such material, as publishers are very good at re-issuing the same material dressed up in different packages. Vocal scores from every successful musical play and operetta that has been in London from the turn of the century are collected but nowadays publishers tend to issue only selections from new works as opposed to the whole score. This can be a problem when an entire score is called for.
Instrumental Items: There are far fewer of these in the popular music area than in serious music, and most of them are issued as piano items. Unless a piece has become popular we only acquire instrumental pieces on demand by users.
Reference Books: The Library administers its own small budget for these items, which is just adequate for our needs. Although this budget is small, the amount of books brought out on the subject per year, including biographies, is also quite small and many of the new publications will duplicate in one form or another material already in stock.
With very few exceptions the use of all the BBC Popular Music Library’s material is confined to BBC staff for programme production and broadcasting. The bulk of the material is still in copyright. The BBC has various agreements with various interested bodies such as the Music Publishers Association by which it agrees not to supply any material to persons or organisations outside of the corporation. Manuscript commissioned arrangements are hired to known individuals or to broadcasting organisations and official bodies provided the agreement of the arrangers involved has been obtained.
The main users of the bulk of the stock are BBC programme makers and the demand for material will vary according to the programme. The stock of arrangements is used by the various BBC orchestras on an ongoing basis by which the usual modern musical tastes are catered for. Sometimes a special programme is created in which a particular musical style or are may be required. It is necessary to be able to identify the required music in stock and retrieve it with the minimum effort: hence the usefulness of file collections and analytical indexes pertaining to specialised subjects. This also applies to research enquiries where information on songs of a particular era or year, artist or band or any other specialised case may have to be pinpointed. Information is often sought on chart success for a particular month or year and all this information must be readily to hand.
A particular type of staff is required in Popular Music Library of radio corporations. Primarily the staffs have to be qualified musically as one would expect the members of staff in any music library to be. However, an academic music training, which would be suitable for a normal music library, is in itself, not sufficient. Over and above musical knowledge and knowledge of library systems, specialists are needed in the subject of popular music. The library requires subject specialists who are able to identify the music, can advise on the idiom and have a more than superficial knowledge. The subject is vast and it is unlikely that anyone will be schooled in more than two or three aspects of it, but taking all staff together it is possible to provide a fairly comprehensive advisory service to potential users.
Popular music in all its forms is a relatively new exercise compared with other archival endeavours and up to this point in time has not been taken too seriously, certainly in academic circles. It has been left to individuals or other interested parties such as broadcasting organisations or publishers to create any workable collections, normally for their own use. But it can be argued that this is an art form which has as much credibility as any other; which appeals to and involves a greater amount of people than most others, and which has a great influence on the entertainment world and the leisure activities of most of the general public. To ignore this mass of material because it may not live up to individuals’ intellectual expectations is a sterile attitude and to a great extent burying one’s head in the sand.
It is up to people such as librarians and archivists to reverse this trend and to preserve what in effect is a wealth of musical experience for posterity. A quotation from Noel Coward, one of the most prolific of English songwriters whose contribution to the field of popular song was enormous will provide an apt conclusion:
“In my early 20s and 30s it was from America that I gained my greatest impetus. In New York, they have always taken light music seriously. There, it is, as it should be, saluted as a specialised form of creative art, and is secure in its own right… Here in England there are few to write the music and fewer still to recognise when it is written”.
Happily nowadays recognition of popular music is no problem. However, those of us who are interested and involved are still fighting a battle to make academic and educational establishments give the recognition to popular or light music that it so richly deserves.
Leslie Wilson is the Librarian of the BBC Popular Music Library in England.
The paper was given as part of a session on the Selection of popular music at the IASA conference in Washington, 1983.