Notes from the Mitchell Library, Sydney: The Alfred Hill collection

Abstract

Abstract The Mitchell Library,1 a department of the State Library of New South Wales, was opened in 1910 to house the Australiana collection of its benefactor, David Scott Mitchell. This collection, which has grown to comprise hundreds of thousands of individual manuscripts, contains many valuable single items and collections relating to all aspects of the history and development of Australia and other cultures of the Southwest Pacific. Manuscripts in the Mitchell Library cover the period of the earliest exploration in the Pacific up to the present day. Of particular interest to musical scholars are the diaries and notebooks of European travellers to the Pacific region which will be surveyed in future issues of Musicology for their observations on music and musical life. As an introduction to the important collections of musical interest deposited in the Library, our first report will focus on the collection of papers of Alfred Hill (1870–1960).2 Born in Melbourne, Hill studied in Leipzig and worked in bo...