Music

In Fall 2022, the archives of the music and comedy duo Smothers Brothers were donated to the UC Santa Barbara Library’s Performing Arts Collection on behalf of the two brothers, Thomas and Richard Smothers.

On January 1, 2022, an estimated 400,000 pre-1923 sound recordings formerly restricted through copyright entered the public domain, thanks to the passing of the Music Modernization Act (MMA). 

The Grammy Museum Foundation issued a $10,000 grant to the UC Santa Barbara Library to preserve, digitize, and make accessible a portion of the groundbreaking radio broadcasts of the CBS Symphony conducted by Bernard Herrmann in the 1930s and 1940s. 

The Music Library now offers limited on-site research appointments for UCSB faculty and graduate students. 

We will provide browsing access to on-site Music print collections (books, scores, and journals).

Thousands of historic sound recordings held by UCSB Library will soon be freely accessible online thanks to a prestigious $349,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

In an unprecedented collaboration, the UC Santa Barbara Library and UCSB Opera Theatre will present the American premiere of a work by a proven master of music and theater.

Both performances of the operetta — which was selected from the library’s Michael and Nan Miller Operetta Archive — will be performed in English by graduate and undergraduate students from the award-winning opera theatre program.

Plans are underway to bring the Music Collection to the main UCSB Library. Currently housed on the second floor of the former Arts Library, the Music Collection supports academic and performance programs in Music at the undergraduate and graduate levels, encompassing both Western and non-Western music.

The collection of Lynn Andersen of Bisbee, Arizona, found a new home at the UC Santa Barbara Library last summer. Andersen was a collector of early phonograph recordings and was particularly interested in two-minute wax cylinders, Pathe discs, and foreign recordings. His collection was not huge in size, but had many significant recordings and was expertly curated. In the collection are about 1,200 two-minute cylinders and a similar number of disc recordings. Andersen passed away in November 2015.

In a contentious political environment, it’s comforting to know that some people prefer to argue about Bach.

Cellists from Pablo Casals to Yo-Yo Ma have interpreted and played Johann Sebastian Bach’s six Cello Suites in very different ways, with music scholars analyzing and debating every nuance.

When UCSB student Joanna Hui, a cellist and Bach fan, earned a $750 grant to study Bach’s Cello Suites, she turned to the UCSB Library and its extensive collection of music recordings to actually hear performances of the Suites by famed cellists.

To find Michael and Nan Miller’s home in the Los Angeles area, just look in the driveway for a car with the license plate “OPERETT.”

To say that the Millers are operetta aficionados doesn’t do them justice. The couple’s home was custom-built to hold their massive collection of 60,000 recordings, 10,000 pieces of sheet music, 9,000 books, 5,000 vocal scores, and numerous posters, programs, postcards, radio broadcasts, and more devoted to operetta and early musical theater.