Holdings Fine Arts and Applied Arts University Bands Lloyd P. Farrar Music Instr... Finding Aid Holdings Fine Arts and Applied Arts University Bands Lloyd P. Farrar Music Instr... Finding Aid By Nolan Vallier and Scott Schwartz
Title: Lloyd P. Farrar Music Instrument Collection and Personal Papers, 1850-2005
ID: 12/9/92
Primary Creator: Farrar, Lloyd Phillip
Extent: 84.0 cubic feet
Arrangement: The Collection is arranged into four unique series: Series 1) Musical Instruments, Series 2) Personal Papers, Series 3) Published Books of Museum Exhibitions and General Histories, and Series 4) Treatises on Instrument Builders and Performance Practice. Series 1 is arranged chronologically by date of acrual. Series 2 is arranged alphabetically by title. Series 3 is arranged into two subseries: Subseries 1) Museum Catalog Books and Exhibits of Musical Instruments and Subseries 2) Published Biographies and General Histories, Both are arranged alphabetically by title. Series 4 is arranged into two subseries: Subseries 1) Publications, Dissertations, and Unpublished Manuscripts on Instrument Builders and Subseries 2) Treatises on Musical Instrument Performance Practice, Both are arranged alphabetically by title.
Date Acquired: 09/26/1995. More info below under Accruals.
Subjects: Brass Instruments, Musical Instrument Collections, Musical Instrument Makers - Europe, Musical Instrument Makers - United States, organology
Formats/Genres: Papers
Languages: English, German, Dutch;Flemish, Czech, Japanese
The collection consists of Woodwind, string, and brass instruments by predominantly American, but some European, musical instrument manufacturers; Personal papers including notes on instrument builders, articles written about musical instruments, and photographs of musical instruments; and 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.
Lloyd P. Farrar (ca. 1932) has been interested in musical instruments since he was a child. 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. After joining the Phi Mu Alpha Fraternity he met his wife Doris Vogt, then a member of Mu Phi Epsilon, both were involved in musical activities at the University and they were married in 1956. At the University of Illinois he 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 and his masters degree in 1956. After his time at the University of Illinois, Farrar spent a year in the Netherlands on a Fullbright Grant studying early Dutch music. He and his wife then 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 band at Mary Washington College in Viriginia. In addition, he helped to form 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, where Mr. Farrar continues to collect and write about musical instruments.
Brass Instruments
Musical Instrument Collections
Musical Instrument Makers - Europe
Musical Instrument Makers - United States
organology
Repository: The Sousa Archives and Center for American Music
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.
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