The ICA Print & Manuscript Music Library

The ICA print and manuscript music library is a wonderful collection of printed and hand-written music that was especially written or arranged for the concertina. It is maintained by ICA librarian Jeremy Hague. We believe it to be the biggest private collection of concertina music in the world. While the majority of the library dates from the 19th and early 20th Century, please don’t let this put you off as there are some wonderful tunes and arrangements for you to discover. As you will see from the listings below, we have music arranged for players of English (baritone, tenor and tenor-treble) and duet systems; we also have some arrangements for playing in parts.

If you are an ICA member, you can receive music by contacting the librarian at librarian@concertina.org. He can send you digitised copies of listed music and additional music to suit your tastes. While we have over 2000 pages of music digitised, the majority is in hard copy, therefore there may be a short wait for your request to be scanned or photographed for you. There is actually more music than is currently listed, so please get in touch and he might have something that you would like.

Donations welcome. Much of the collection of the ICA library has been created through the generous donations of concertina players and their families. If you have music, or items that you think would be of interest to our members, we would be very happy to talk you.

Joining the Dots – an ICA special interest group. In the autumn of 2017 a new ICA special interest group was formed. Joining the Dots is for those who want to learn to play the type of arrangements that are housed in the library. At first glance, some of the music appears quite complex and off-putting, but the new group aims to encourage players to have a go, and even to make their own arrangements. So, if you’ve ever wrestled with Ernest Rutherford, been bothered by Richard Blagrove, or struggled with Henry Stanley, please join us. I know that there are library users literally dotted across the UK and internationally ad, through this group, the ICA will try to join these dot-loving players. Every three months (or so), I will try to share a piece of music from the library to all group members to try out, share their thoughts on whether it is a good arrangement, suggested improvements, fingering suggestions and so on. Hopefully, over time, group members might even create new arrangements of tunes for each other’s opinions. We may even meet up at some point.

Please get in touch. If members of the ICA would like music from the library, or sign-up to Joining the Dots, please feel free to email me and I will try to respond as soon as possible.

Jeremy Hague librarian@concertina.org