Search
Links
Click here to see all of our links
Click here to join our mailing list
Duke University Links
The Catalog
This catalog site is designed so that it can be searched by keyword, collection, type of instrument, and date. It contains information on instruments in the possession of Duke University, with the exception of modern practice and performance pianos.
Modern Orchestral System
Woodwinds
Brass
Percussion
Keyboard
Strings
Paintings
Books
Periodicals
Printed Music
Manuscripts
Recordings
Miscellaneous
Hornbostel-Sachs
Idiophones
Membranophones
Chordophones
Aerophones
Electrophones
The Collections
Eddy
De Hen-Bijl
Miller
DUMIC
Collegium
Replica Harpsichords and Fortepianos
Organs
Music Department Instruments
Contact Info
Dr. Brenda Neece, DPhil (Oxon.)
Curator, DUMIC
Box 90665
Durham, NC 27708-0665
USA
Tel: 919-660-3320
Fax: 919-660-3301
Are you an administrator?
Mamadou Diabate Wins Grammy Award!
Mamadou Diabate, internationally known kora artist and Durham resident received a well-deserved Best Traditional World Music Album Grammy Award for his album Douga Mansa. The News & Observer ran an interesting piece HERE. See photos from the Grammy Awards HERE and HERE.
DUMIC was the first division of Duke to invite Mr. Diabate to perform, back in 2005, for the inauguration of the Frans & Willemina de Hen-Bijl Collection. In 2007, DUMIC and the Duke University Libraries were fortunate to have Mr. Diabate give a program in the Rare Music series called A Griot and his Kora. Diabate’s Rare Music program celebrated the addition of a kora made by his father to DUMIC. Mr. Diabate brought this kora back from Mali himself.
Congratulations to Mamadou Diabate from DUMIC!
Frans and Willemina De Hen-Bijl Collection
Duke’s Frans & Willemina de Hen-Bijl Collection includes over 200 instruments, 100 reel-to-reel field recordings, and over 1000 slides of musical instruments from all over the world that were collected by prominent Belgian organologist and ethnomusicologist Professor Ferdinand J. de Hen whose main interests are the history and structure of classical European, Indian, and African musical instruments.
Named for his parents, the collection was acquired during his research expeditions. His collecting journeys were often quite exciting. He traveled through much of Afghanistan on horseback collecting instruments. While there he also followed a Khutchi tribe on foot for days without making contact; as de Hen recalled, “They have to invite you otherwise they may shoot you . . . I finally was invited.” Once on his travels he ate bread with currants that turned out to be flies. He also had some interesting adventures in Macedonia: one night he slept in a flea-infested bed on his travels there and one day he was shown around by the mayor of Berovo who was wearing his newest acquisition – a pair of pyjamas. De Hen remembers that in Morocco he was cured by a medicine man: “I was ‘cured’ from fever by members of the Ait bu Guemmez tribe . . . beating the whole night on their drums – a dead man would have got out because of the noise!” In Irian Jaya (New Guinea) he narrowly escaped being kidnapped by the Dani tribe. He ended up spending some time among them and was amused by the fact that the men were completely naked except for calabashes; apparently they took pride in bragging about and comparing calabash sizes. He was adopted twice: once by an old Berber woman in the Ahansali tribe (Morocco) and another time by Princess Thopi in her clan in Swaziland. Even at home he was reminded of his travels: he “had a wonderful butterfly come out in Belgium from an instrument brought back from Swaziland.”
De Hen received his training in Antwerp, Louvain, Cologne, and London. He has degrees in Colonial and Administrative Sciences and Political and Administrative Sciences from the Institute Universitaire des Territoires d’Outremer, Antwerp. He also has a degree in African Linguistics from the University of Louven, and a doctorate in musicology and anthropology from Cologne University, with a dissertation on African instruments. While doing his doctorate he did a research course on African and Indian Music at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London University. Now mostly retired, de Hen has worked as a scientific collaborator and research assistant at the Museum of Instruments in Brussels, as the Director of the Artistic Humanities (Brussels), as Professor of the Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth (Waterloo), and Professor & Head of Department in Musicology at the State University (Ghent), as Professor of the Hoger Instituut voor Dramatische Kunst (Antwerp), and a guest Professor at the University of Keele (UK). In 1987 he was appointed to the Peter Paul Rubens chair at the University of California, Berkeley, he became an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Overseas Sciences (Brussels) in 1989, and a member of the Academie europeenne des Sciences et des Arts (Paris) in 2003. He has also given lectures at Osaka, Kyoto, Cologne, Belfast, Denver, Brussels, Antwerp, and The Hague. He has published seven books and some 250 articles, including a book with Roger Bragard on the history of instruments that has been translated into several languages.
R. Larry Todd
R. Larry Todd
R. Larry Todd is Arts and Sciences Professor of Music at Duke University, where he has taught for 30 years. He received his Ph.D. in Musicology from Yale University. Prof. Todd is the author of Mendelssohn: A Life in Music (Oxford: 2003), widely hailed as the definitive biography of Felix Mendelssohn and now translated into German (Carus-Verlag/Reclam: 2008). His newest book, Fanny Hensel: The Other Mendelssohn, was published by Oxford University Press in 2009. In especially high demand for Mendelssohn events this year, Todd is traveling the world from California and New York to Leipzig and London, giving lectures, pre-concert talks, and interviews, and filming documentaries. In addition to his work on the Mendelssohns, Todd is respected for his work as an author, editor, and lecturer on topics ranging from Obrecht to Webern.
Recorder Information
For the purposes of the New Music for Old Instruments project, baroque recorders will be discussed, although DUMIC has both baroque and renaissance types.
An excellent source for information on ranges and notation of recorder parts is the Dolmetsch Online site.
In addition, there is a guide by Ann Bies, which she wrote for a composer friend in 2003.
As English and American terminology is different, here is a list with both and the key of each:
Soprano/Descant: C
Alto/Treble: F
Tenor: C
Bass/Bass in F: F
Consult the above links for further information.
Crumhorn Information
Crumhorns are hook-shaped, wind-cap woodwind instruments with double reeds that were originally in use for a very limited period (c1480-1650). However, these are some of the most common instruments of the early music revival, made in the 1950s by makers such as Otto Steinkopf and Hermann Moeck.
DUMIC contains several SATB families of crumhorns, some from the Collegium Collection, some from the Miller, and some from the Warner.
Modern crumhorns have a slightly larger compass than original examples through the addition of keys. Although there are some variations, here are basic ranges for each size of our modern examples:
S: c’-f’’
A: f-b-flat’
T: c-f’
B: F-b-flat
Here is an interesting example of a modern improvisation on the alto crumhorn from this page, which has lots of useful information.
Rebec Information
Rebecs are one of the ancestors of the violin, commonly with three strings tuned in fifths. It is pear-shaped with a rounded back. The rebecs in DUMIC are from the Warner Collection and most were made by Warner himself and do not have a rounded back. Warner made an entire family of rebecs consisting of SATB members. Possible tunings for each are as follows:
S: d’-a’-e’’
A: g-d’-a’
T: c-g-d’
B: A-c-g
Many variants can be used, and a combination of a 4th and a 5th (in either configuration) can be used instead of two 5ths. Given the above tunings, the range for each instrument could safely extend another couple of whole steps without shifting, giving one the comfortable upper end of the compass.
Many thanks to John Pringle for all of his help and tuning information, and many thanks to the folks at High Strung for their sponsorship of this project in their work on the instruments and bows.
Robert D. Miller Collection
Duke alumnus Dr. Robert D. Miller (1941-2006) bequeathed his collection of replicas of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque musical instruments to the Duke University Musical Instrument Collections. The Miller Collection arrived on campus late in 2006, and many of the instruments have been on display in the upper lobby of the Mary Duke Biddle Music Building from January 2007.
The Miller Collection includes over 30 musical instruments, related sheet music, wooden music stands, and display mounts for his instruments. Most of the instruments are in playing condition.
A native North Carolinian, Dr. Miller was educated in the Chapel Hill public elementary and high schools, graduating as valedictorian of his class at Chapel Hill High School in June of 1959. He attended Davidson College from 1959 to 1960 and then studied at the University of London and the University of Vienna before returning to Davidson in 1961. He graduated cum laude from Davidson College in June 1964. He earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry here at Duke in 1972 for his dissertation, “A Study of the Changes in Histones During Evolution and Development” and his M.D. in 1973 from the Duke Medical School. He was also a resident in Psychiatry at Duke from 1973 through 1976. Throughout his career he published extensively and taught Forensic Psychiatry in the contexts of both Health Sciences and Law programs. Before his death not only was he a Professor of Psychiatry, but he also served as Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Denver College of Law and as the Director of the Forensic Fellowship Program at the University of Colorado.
Duke Collegium Musicum
The Duke Collegium Musicum is an organization of undergraduate and graduate students and other interested members of the Duke community devoted to the performance of early music for small groups of voices and instruments. Its repertory includes (but is not limited to) Gregorian chant, Renaissance motets and madrigals, and Baroque sonatas and cantatas.
The Collegium is open to all members of the Duke community with an interest in performing music that is both unusual and exciting. The ability to read music is necessary, and some prior experience in chamber music or choral singing is helpful. The Music Department owns a number of period instruments (from gambas to sackbuts) that can be made available to qualified participants. There is also the opportunity to participate in recorder and viol consorts.
Bradley Simmons
Bradley Simmons, a native of New York City, began playing Afro-Cuban and African percussion when he was 9 years old. He traveled throughout the City seeking out percussion teachers from Haiti, Cuba and Africa in an effort to enhance his understanding of these rhythmic forms, styles and techniques. Bradley soon became a sought after Conguero and shekere player and a link in the chain of the oral traditions of Afro-Cuban and African music. Simmons has always sought out Afro-Cuban and African percussion in its purest forms, never deviating from long-standing traditions in rhythm and playing techniques. Simmons’ talents have been heard on Broadway in plays such as Timbuktu with Eartha Kitt and Melba Moore, Billy Wilson’s version of Guys and Dolls starring Robert Guillume, and Reggae with Calvin Lockhart and Philip Michael Thomas. He has also appeared in nightclubs with Eartha Kitt, Gregory, Maurice Hines, Miles Jaye, and Oba Babatunde. He has recorded and played with The Fatback Band and with drummer Norman Connors. Simimons has made television appearances, including performances on The Mike Douglas Show and the Cerebral Palsy Telethon. He directed his own show, Cultural Journey: The Elements of Percussion, at The National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta, GA (1990) and Durham, NC (1996).
Simmons is the former Music Director of the Chuck Davis African-American Dance Ensemble of Durham, NC, and has taught throughout the United States, including the Larocque Bey School of Dance and the Gloria Jackson School of Dance in NYC. He has taught percussion classes and drum clinics at academic institutions including Berklee College of Music (Boston MA), Texas Southern University (Houston, TX), Wichita State University (Wichita, KS) and North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC). Currently, Simmons directs music ensembles at Duke, where he teaches both West African music and history. His classes focus on djembe, songba, djun-djun, and kenkeni. He also teaches Afro-Cuban percussion classes off campus. He is the leader of the percussion ensemble, The Elements of Percussion, touring around the nation.
The Elements of Percussion
Djembe/Djun Djun ensemble founded in 1997 by Bradley Simmons and based in Durham, North Carolina.