An Archive and a Collection of Rare Music Scores: The William Crawford III Collections

William (Bill) Crawford III (1932–2013), a collector of first-edition printed music, left his prized collection and its accompanying papers to the University of Washington’s Music Library. The collection focuses on vocal music, especially opera piano-vocal scores. The collection spans six centuries, beginning with Palestrina’s second book of madrigals (1586), and ends with Peter Schickele’s Music for Judy (2013). The bulk of the publications, however, date from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The accompanying materials include purchase records and research on the items in the collection; collected letters including some from Rossini, Puccini, and Britten; photographs of performers; and photographs taken during the Spoleto Festival (Italy) when Crawford was manager. The paper highlights some of the treasures of the collection, the acquisition history and Crawford’s collection plan, and the principles on which the archival collection is arranged.