Adiminsrative/Biographical History:
The University of Illinois Musicological Archives for Renaissance Manuscript Studies (MARMS) was established in 1968 by the board of trustees as a unit of the School of Music. Co-founded by Charles Hamm and Herbert Kellman, the archives were developed to further interest into music of the Renaissance (1400-1600), making research on both original manuscript and printed sources of that music more accessible to scholars. The project was led by Hamm until 1975. Following Hamm's departure from the University, Kellman took over as director. However, many other scholars were involved in contributing manuscripts and their knowledge to the project, including Tom Ward (UIUC), Margaret Bent (Princeton), David Crawford (University of Michigan), Andrew Hughes (University of Toronto), Lewis Lockwood (Harvard), Leeman Perkins (Columbia University), Joshua Rifkin (Brandeis University), and Robert Snow (University of Texas). The day-to-day operations of the project were managed by graduate assistant and research archivist, Jerry Call. After Call graduated in 1992, the Archives were managed by graduate students Tim Barnes and Sarah Long.
Since 1968, MARMS has consisted of an expanding collection of microfilm duplicates of primary sources from around Europe, including microfilm copies of nearly 1,600 manuscripts dating from 1400 to 1550, books of polyphony dating from 1550-1600, many printed anthologies from 1500-1600, and an index to the collected microfilms. MARMS is currently accessible through the University of Illinois Music and Performing Arts Library Special Collections. One of the largest projects MARMS undertook was the Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music, 1400-1550, which was produced in 5 volumes and edited by Herbert Kellman between 1979 and 1988. This work was supported by a decade-long grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.