One of the themes of this year’s Explore Your Archive campaign is #ArchivesRocks. This has encouraged me to look at a few sources in DMU Special Collections relating to music.
It was important to sport the latest fashion when attending a music performance, as this illustration of ‘opera dress’ demonstrates. From “The Ladies Cabinet”, 1852, part of the Rare Books and Journals collection.
These cassette tapes hold a recording of a lunchtime concert held at Leicester Polytechnic in 1981. Details of other lunchtime concerts are found in the programmes. These are part of an uncatalogued ‘events’ section of DMU Archive.
Leicester Polytechnic and DMU in the 1990s were well-known for hosting gigs for prominent bands. An alumni donated these tickets to the Archive while the gig schedule is from the press cuttings albums.
We hold a copy of a String Quartet commissioned by De Montfort University from composer Sally Beamish. The piece was performed by the Schidlof Quartet in honour of the retirement of Professor Kenneth Barker as Vice-Chancellor, July 1999.
Photograph from the Official Report of the Leicester Polytechnic Caving and Mountaineering Club trip to Oksfjord, Loppa Peninsular, Finnmark, Arctic Norway in March 1971. The students undertook a geological survey – looking at rocks!
