Eric McGavin Collection

This collection provides a broad and comprehensive record of Eric McGavin's career as an instrument tuner, music educator, and researcher into the history, development and manufacture of woodwind and brass instruments, with particular emphasis on the clarinet, oboe and bassoon. The records date principally from McGavin's employment with Boosey & Hawkes Ltd. at their factory and museum in Edgware in 1950 until his death in 1970. As well as notes, resources and manuscripts compiled by McGavin to support his series of talks, lectures and publications on musicology, instrument care and manufacture, and school music education, the collection also contains a series of approximately 440 photographs of McGavin at work, of his music students, of various 20th century musicians and of instruments held in the Boosey & Hawkes Museum (many of which are now held by the Horniman Museum and Gardens).

During the initial curation and appraisal of the collection the original curator, Bradley Strauchen, made a series of oral recordings providing contextual information for many of the files and items in this collection. Transcripts of her recordings have been added to the relevant series, file and item level descriptions in the scope and content fields.

For further contextual information on the collection and McGavin's association with Boosey & Hawkes see the following publications:
‘A Manufacturer’s Museum: the Collection of Boosey & Hawkes’, Bradley Strauchen and Arnold Myers, 2007, Musique, Images, Instruments. Revue française d'organologie et d'iconographie musicale. Les collections d'instruments de musique (2e partie).
‘Resources for Clarinet Research in the Boosey & Hawkes Collection and Archive’, Bradley Strauchen, in press, Proceedings of the Clarinet and Woodwind Colloquium 2007.
‘Boosey & Hawkes’, Bradley Strauchen, in press, New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments 2nd edition