One of the largest music libraries in the Western hemisphere, the Sibley Music Library was founded in 1904 as a philanthropic venture by businessman Hiram Watson Sibley “for the use of all music lovers in Rochester.” Now associated with the Eastman School of Music, which actually opened seventeen years after the library, the Sibley Library is mainly a research and academic institution though it does still serve music lovers of the local, national, and international community. Among the rarities of the special collections, the library houses “The Rochester Manuscript,” a music theory treatise from the eleventh century by Herman of Reichenau (also known by the impolitic name Hermanus Contractus, or Herman the Lame). Dispersed among the stacks, one can find guitar tab for Prince’s “Purple Rain” or illustrated children’s books from the 1890s of French folk songs, and who knows what else.
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