With over 300,000 recordings on tape, disc, cylinder, and piano roll, the Historical Music Recordings Collection is both the depository for University of Texas at Austin recordings and those of select orchestras, radio stations, national and international arts organizations. Named collections within the HMRC include: Irving Feld Radio Dramas; UT Radio House Transcription Discs; Mary Henrietta Chase Collection of Bing Crosby Lacquer Discs; KUT open-reel tape; Longhorn Radio Network open-reel tape; KMFA "20th century Romantics"; Austin Symphony Orchestra; Houston Symphony Orchestra; HMRC-CDs; 16-inch transcription discs (general collection).
Content types:
Performed music, Sounds (Other than music & language), and Spoken word
Formats:
Pressed LP disc, Pressed 78rpm disc, Pressed 45rpm disc, Lacquer disc, Optical disc (including CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, DVD-R, DVD-RW, VCD), Metal disc, LaserDisc, Cylinder, Analog audiocassette, Digital compact cassette, Digital Audio Tape (DAT), Polyester open reel tape, Acetate open reel tape, Motion picture film, VHS (including SVHS and VHS-C), Betamax, U-matic (including U-matic S), Text document, and Piano rolls
Extent:
300,000 items
Repository/Collector:
The University of Texas at Austin, Fine Arts Library
Over 250 16-inch broadcast transcriptions dated from July of 1941 through February of 1950, divided more or less evenly between news material (principally from the NBC "Blue" network) and "classical" music: largely orchestral music, with some opera selections.
Printed music and some manuscripts from Dallas-Fort Worth area radio stations WFAA and WBAP, accumulated through the decades in which they employed live radio orchestras.
A very large amount of sheet music, both popular and classical, including a significant segment of choral and sacred works from when WOR employed an in-house radio orchestra.
Memorabilia from a classical music radio station in New York City, WNCN 104.3, and includes items reflecting efforts by its Listeners Guild to keep the station on the air in a classical format.