Friday, November 16, 2012

Dangerous times for music -- The Netherlands

As Norman Lebrecht reports in this blog post:

As part of the Dutch government’s plans to dismantle the Broadcast Music Centre in Hilversum – plans that also involve the abolition of an orchestra and chorus – one of the biggest sheet music libraries in western Europe is going to disappear.

Unless the MCO library can raise independent funding in the next nine months, the scores will be sold to dealers or turfed out into the street. About 5,000 have been digitized, the rest will be lost. You can read more about it here (in Dutch).

What a shame that such a cultural resource would be destroyed or scattered in such a way that they would no longer be generally available.

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