Lloyd P. Farrar Music Instrument Collection and Personal Papers

Overview

Scope and Contents

Biographical Note

Subject Terms

Administrative Information

Detailed Description

Music Instruments

Research Notes and Files

Music Library

Personal Papers

TEMP



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Finding Aid for Lloyd P. Farrar Music Instrument Collection and Personal Papers, 1850-2005 | The Sousa Archives and Center for American Music

By Nolan Vallier and Scott Schwartz

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Collection Overview

Title: Lloyd P. Farrar Music Instrument Collection and Personal Papers, 1850-2005Add to your cart.View associated digital content.

ID: 12/9/92

Primary Creator: Farrar, Lloyd Philip (1934-2025)

Extent: 84.0 cubic feet

Arrangement:

The Collection is arranged into four series: Series 1) Instrument Collection, Series 2) Research Notes and Files, Series 3) Music Library, and Series 4) Personal Papers.

Series 1 is organized into two sub-series: 1) Musical Instruments, which is arranged chronologically by date of accrual, and 2) Instrument Collection Documentation, which is arranged alphabetically by instrument and then by manufacturer.

Series 2 is organized into three sub-series: 1) Instrument Manufacturer Catalogs and Research Files, which is arranged alphabetically by manufacturer; 2) Biographies and Histories, which is arranged alphabetically by given title and chronologically therein; and 3) Archives, Auctions, Libraries, Museums, and Personal Instrument Collection Catalogs, which is arranged alphabetically by given title and chronologically therein.

Series 3 is arranged by instrument part book in score order, and alphabetically by title thereafter.

Series 4 is arranged alphabetically by given title and chronologically thereafter.

Date Acquired: 09/26/1995. More info below under Accruals.

Subjects: Alumni, Brass Instruments, Music--Societies, etc. -- United States, Musical Instrument Collections, Musical Instrument Makers - Europe, Musical Instrument Makers - United States, Musicology, organology, Phi Mu Alpha, University of Illinois, University of Texas, Woodwind Instruments

Formats/Genres: Papers

Languages: English, German, Dutch;Flemish, Czech, Japanese

Scope and Contents of the Materials

Consists of Lloyd Farrar's collection of woodwind, string, and brass instruments by predominantly American, but some European, musical instrument manufacturers; his research papers including notes on instrument builders, articles written about musical instruments, and photographs of musical instruments; collected books on musical instrument builders, museum collections and exhibits of musical instruments, treatises on performance practice and building musical instruments, and general histories about music in the 19th century; and a small body of personal papers, documenting the life and organological research of Lloyd Farrar.

Biographical Note

Lloyd P. Farrar (1934-2025) was an organologist and musicologist. The son of Dr. Milton Dyer Farrar and Helen Farrar, he was born and grew up in Urbana, IL. From 1932 to 1946, Farrar's father was a professor of entomology with the Illinois State Natural History Survey Division. For three years, the family lived in Durham, New Hampshire while Dr. Farrar worked as the associate director of the Crop Protection Institute. His family moved once again to Clemson, South Carolina in 1949 after his father became the head of Clemson University's Entomology and Zoology Department. Lloyd Farrar attended the Philips Academy, an all-male boarding high school, in Andover Massachussetts, graduating in 1952.

After starting college as a geologist in North Carolina, he hitchhiked across the country to the University of Illinois where he studied trombone and musicology. As a music major, he joined Phi Mu Alpha Fraternity. He met his wife Doris Vogt, who was also studying music and was a member of Mu Phi Epsilon. The two were married in 1956. At the University of Illinois, Farrar performed as the principal trombonist in the University Symphony Orchestra as well as on sackbut with the Collegium Musicum. Farrar graduated with his bachelors degree in music in 1955. The following year he earned a masters degree in musicology.

Farrar then spent a year in the Netherlands on a Fullbright Grant studying early Dutch music. Following this, he and his wife traveled to the University of Texas at Austin where he began his PhD in Musicology, but he never completed his dissertation. While he was in Washington DC studying at the Library of Congress, Farrar took a job teaching music history and conducting the wind band at Mary Washington College in Viriginia. In addition, he formed the nearby Prince George's Civic Orchestra in Washington DC, conducting the orchestra from 1965 to 1969.

Around 1971, Farrar began to lose his sight and abandoned much of his intensive bibliographic work at the time, but continued his organological work. During the mid 1970s he collected hundreds of musical instruments as a means of correcting and expanding Lindesay Langwill's instrumental history book to include American manufacturers. Between the late 1970s and mid 1980s, Farrar was one of the country's leading organologists, writing articles for The Woodwind Quarterly, The International Trumpet Guild, The American Musical Instrument Society, The Serpent Newsletter, and the American Musicological Society as well as serving on the board of governors for the American Musical Instrument Society, where he chaired the committee for revisions to the Langwill Index. In 1988, Farrar examined and arranged the John Held and Chatfield Band Library at the Utah State Archives. In the late 1980s he began the Patuxent Martial Musick Collection in Colesville, Maryland, which was later transferred to the Sousa Archives in 1995. In 1996, the Farrars moved to Norris, Tennessee. Farrar died on January 10, 2025 in his Tennessee home.

Subject/Index Terms

Alumni
Brass Instruments
Music--Societies, etc. -- United States
Musical Instrument Collections
Musical Instrument Makers - Europe
Musical Instrument Makers - United States
Musicology
organology
Phi Mu Alpha
University of Illinois
University of Texas
Woodwind Instruments

Administrative Information

Repository: The Sousa Archives and Center for American Music

Accruals:

Additional materials were acquired from Lloyd Farrar on September 29, 2004; January 25, 2005; March 4, 2012; and June 26, 2016.

Yamaha Bb Flugelhorn received from Geoffrey Britten on May 2, 2019.

Serpent, Sackbut, Alto Shawm, and Tenor Shawm transferred from the School of Music on July 22, 2024.

Addition of unprocessed historical flutes, fifes, piccolos, clarinets, and research files acquired from Mark Farrar on March 10, 2025

Acquisition Source: Lloyd Farrar

Acquisition Method: Gift of Lloyd and Doris Farrar.


Box and Folder Listing


Browse by Series:

[Series 1: Music Instruments, ca. 1850-1967],
[Series 2: Research Notes and Files],
[Series 3: Music Library],
[Series 4: Personal Papers],
[Series 5: TEMP],
[All]

Series 3: Music LibraryAdd to your cart.
Consists of sheet music collected and performed by Farrar and his son. Arranged by part book in score order.
Box 2Add to your cart.
Folder 11: Star Dust Fox Trot, by Hoagy Carmichael, arr. Jimmy Dale, 1931Add to your cart.
New York: Mills Music, Inc.
Box 9Add to your cart.
Folder 1: German Folk Songs, undatedAdd to your cart.
Folder 2: First B Flat Clarinet Parts, undatedAdd to your cart.
Folder 3: Second B Flat Clarinet Parts, undatedAdd to your cart.
Folder 4: Bass (Tuba) Parts, undatedAdd to your cart.
Folder 5: B Flat Trumpet Parts, undatedAdd to your cart.
Folder 6: Jolly Lumberjack March, undatedAdd to your cart.
March composed by Josef Franz Wagner
Folder 7: C Piccolo and Flute Parts, undatedAdd to your cart.
Folder 8: Parts for Cavatina, undatedAdd to your cart.
From Donizetti's opera "Parisina"
Folder 9: Marche Militaire, undatedAdd to your cart.
Composed and dedicated to General William Hall by W.V. Wallace
Folder 10: Glee - Variations, undatedAdd to your cart.
Variations include: "The Mariners" (Dr. Calcott), "You gave me your heart" (Webbe), "Ye spotted snakes" (R. I. Stevens), and "Winds gently whisper" (J. Whitaker).
Folder 11: Bid the Vitures, 1952Add to your cart.
Aria for soprano, oboe, and piano. Composed by Henry Pursell. Distributed by Schott & Co. LTD., in London, England.
Folder 12: Our Generals' Quickstep, undatedAdd to your cart.
Composed by C.S. Crafulla. As performed by the Seventh Regiment National Guard Band
Folder 13: The Prefent State of Little Britain, undatedAdd to your cart.
Folder 14: Trompeterlieder, undatedAdd to your cart.
a.d. Oper: "Der Trompeter con Säckingen". Composed by von Viktor E. Neßler, Bearb. v. Richard Stegmann
Folder 15: E Flat Tuba Parts for Carolers' Favorites (revised), undatedAdd to your cart.
The Salvation Army (Eastern Territory Music Department, New York, NY. A Christmas and Special Occasions Song Repertoire for Brass Quartets, Ensembles and Bands. Arranged by Erik Leidzen.
Folder 16: Hansen's Polka Combos for Small Dance Bands, undatedAdd to your cart.
Folder 17: "Harry L. Alford's Hungry Five in Germany" and "German Band Encores", undatedAdd to your cart.
Contains part books for "Harry L. Alford's Hungry Five in Germany" and a full score for "German Band Encores"
Folder 18: Part Books for International Polkas for Orchestra, number 2, 1952Add to your cart.
Folder 19: Works for Band, Winds, and Percussion, Volume 1, 1967Add to your cart.
From the Music Educators National Conference in Washington, D.C., as part of the Contemporary Music Project for Creativity in Music Education and the Composers in Public Schools program.
Folder 20: I Don't Want a Doctor All I Want is a Beautiful Girl, undatedAdd to your cart.
Words by Ed Rose, Music by Jack Mills, Arranged by Mornay D. Helm.
Folder 21: Baritone Parts for Various Songs, undatedAdd to your cart.
Folder 22: Brass Band Quartets Sheet Music, undatedAdd to your cart.
Includes "A Soldier's Chorus" from Faust (Gounod, arr. by T.H. Rollinson), "The Bugle Horn: Hunting Song" (C.A. White), "A Warrior Bold" (Stephen Adams), "Where Are the Friends of my Youth" (George Barker), "O Hush Thee, My Baby" (Arthur Sullivan),"I waited for the Lord" (Mendelssohn).
Folder 23: B Flat Coronet Parts, undatedAdd to your cart.
Folder 24: First B Flat Coronet Parts, undatedAdd to your cart.
Folder 25: First Trombone Parts, undatedAdd to your cart.
Folder 26: First E Flat Alto Saxophone Parts, undatedAdd to your cart.
Folder 27: The Compleat Tutor for the German Flue, undatedAdd to your cart.
Subtitle reads: Containing the Best and Easiest Instructions for Learners to Obtain a Proficiency. Translated from the French. To which is Added a Choice Collection of most Celebrated Italian, English, and Scotch Tunes. Curiously Adapted to that Instrument.
Folder 28: "The Love Not, Quick Step" for Piano, undatedAdd to your cart.
As performed by the Independent Blues Band. Arranged by James M. Deems. Published by F.D. Benteen
Folder 29: E Flat Horn Parts, undatedAdd to your cart.
Handwritten sheet music for the Beer Barrel Polka
Folder 30: Parts for "Clarinet Polka", undatedAdd to your cart.
Folk song, arranged by Henry W. Davis. Published by Rubank, Inc., in Chicago, IL
Folder 31: Parts for "The Lord is King!", undatedAdd to your cart.
Three Songs for Baritone Solo, Chorus, Organ (ad lib.) and Brass Band, by Edward Thomas and arranged by Philip Wilby

Browse by Series:

[Series 1: Music Instruments, ca. 1850-1967],
[Series 2: Research Notes and Files],
[Series 3: Music Library],
[Series 4: Personal Papers],
[Series 5: TEMP],
[All]

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