December 1, 1999
Music library includes rare collections
___By Karen Varnedoe
___Southwestern Seminary
___FORT WORTH--The songs of Christians from centuries past continue to declare the greatness of God to new generations of musicians through the collection at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary's Kathryn Sullivan Bowld Music Library.
___Hymnals from as far back as 1640, gospel songs from the 1800s and complete works of Bach, Brahms, Schubert and Palestrina are just a part of Bowld's 300,000-piece collection available to students, faculty and the general public.
___Though the library's emphasis is church music, music from the great masters of the past to modern avant-garde compositions also may be found within the 31,000-square-foot facility that adjoins Cowden Hall, the seminary's music building.
___"The library collection is truly unique among Southern Baptist seminaries emphasizing special music scores and hymnal collections," said Berry Driver, director of libraries at Southwestern.
___Among the 32,000 books, 13,600 recordings, 160,000 octavos and 94,000 scores are the George Stebbins Collection and the Gladys Day Collection, with items ranging from Gladys Day's class notes and letters, to a Pablo Picasso print and an original sketch of the seminary.
___Most of the rare items are kept in the Robert Douglass Treasure Room, including unusual ethnic musical instruments made of turtle shells, braided grass, polished nut hulls, bamboo and animal skins from South America, Asia, Africa and other regions.
___Another treasure of the library is "The Dictionary of American Hymnology," which has 6,000 hymnals from 1640 to 1986 on microfilm. A listing of hymn resources available through the Internet gives sites featuring audio files, texts and research papers.
___Many of the items in the library's collection have followed interesting paths to Southwestern. Near the entrance, the library displays a 19th-century square piano, the most common type of piano made for home use during that era until upright pianos replaced them in popularity in the closing decades of the century.
___The piano, manufactured about 1857 by Haines Brothers of New York, was donated by Mr. and Mrs. Forrest Daniell of Houston, who, according to the family, obtained it from Texas governor James Webb Throckmorton. When Throckmorton was forced out of office by reconstructionists in 1868, the governor sold the piano to his half-sister and her husband, Virginia (Throckmorton) and Lake Wilson, the grandparents of Mr. Daniell.
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