The Harry Ransom Center is an internationally renowned humanities research center. Music materials can be found across the collections of the Ransom Center. In addition to manuscript and printed scores, libretti, and books on music theory, history, and notation, the collections contain musicians' correspondence, photographs, artwork, recordings, clippings, programs, and costume and set designs, dating from the 11th-century to the present.
The Briscoe Center for American History is one of the nation’s leading research centers for historical study. Since 1980, the center has built extensive research collections of folk and popular music from Texas and the greater South and Southwest in an effort to document the development of not only different musical styles but also the music industry itself. Significant collections include the Willie Nelson Collection; the Study of the American Spiritual; 19th century sheet music in the Natchez Trace Collection; the folk and country music collection of Townsend Miller; business and talent files for Austin venues such as the Armadillo World HEadquarters and Soap Creek Saloon; material on Navasota songster and guitarist Mance Lipscomb; commerical recordings from the 1920s to the present in the Texas Music Collection; and the archives of Kerrville Festival founder Rod Kennedy.
The UT Libraries holds a number of archival and special collections related to music. For information regarding access and additional collections not listed below, contact Molly Roy.
The Historical Music Recordings Collection contains over 200,000 items on nearly all formats, including LPs, 45s, 78s, lacquer discs, broadcast transcription discs, audio cassettes, piano rolls, and open reel tape. See the research guide for further information.
The collection contains twenty works by violinist, composer, and professor Howard Boatwright, including both sacred and secular works for a variety of instrumental and vocal settings.
The collection contains several publications, manuscripts, recordings, and correspondence by Dr. Gerre Hancock, Butler School of Music faculty member from 2004-12. Hancock was considered the finest organ improviser in America.
The collection, digitized and made available in Texas Scholarworks, comprises 25 letters and postcards, and 9 photographs. Correspondents are Milton Babbitt, Aaron Copland, David Diamond, Howard Hanson, Ulysses Kay, Otto Luening, Vincent Persichetti, Jaromir Podesva, William Schuman, and Clark Terry. Karl Korte was a teacher of composition at the University of Texas at Austin from 1971 to 1996 and co-director of the electronic music studio from 1984.
In partnership with the Teresa Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies (LLILAS), the Benson is a global destination for research and study, with over a million volumes as well as a wealth of original manuscripts, photographs and various media related to Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean and Latina/Latino presence in the United States.
The Black Diaspora Archive collects archival, audiovisual, digital, and artistic works related to the Black Diaspora of the Americas and Caribbean. This encompasses historical publications, contemporary records, personal papers, and rare material produced by and/or about people of African descent—including scholars, professionals, community groups, activists, and artists.
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