The G. Norman and Ruth G. Eddy Collection of Musical Instruments
For more information, contact Brenda Neece, curator of DUMIC and the Eddy Collection.
Mission Statement
The G. Norman and Ruth G. Eddy collection, housed in the Mary Duke Biddle Music Building at Duke University comprises over 500 late eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and early twentieth-century instruments with particular depth in woodwinds, brass, and early pianos. The collection was acquired by Duke alumnus G. Norman Eddy (1906-2000) over a period of many years; it includes a series of remarkable trompe d'¦il paintings by Dr. Eddy depicting the evolution, cross-sections, and other technical details of the instruments. The Eddy Collection is unique in the Southeast and creates an opportunity for in-depth study of the development of musical instruments, history of instrument technology, historically informed performance practice, and instrument conservation.
It is the aim of the Eddy Collection to provide students, scholars, performers, and interested members of the public with access to these instruments in order to foster awareness and interest in music of the past and an understanding of the complex network of interrelationships between composing, performing, and instrument making. The collection provides resources for students of nineteenth-century American culture and brass bands, and for students of the acoustics of musical instruments.
This mission enhances the existing tradition of historically informed performance practice in the Duke Department of Music. The Eddy Collection also complements the Music Department's existing collection of harpsichords, fortepianos, and tracker organs, and the Alexander Weinmann Collection of Sheet Music (18th and 19th-century primary sources) in Perkins Library.
To achieve these aims the Eddy Collection will
- enhance Duke educational programs through lecture-demonstrations, concerts, academic courses, scholarly research, conferences
- enhance the Music Department's performance program by making selected instruments available for concert use by faculty, guest artists, and students
- display a significant portion of the collection publicly
- maintain and enhance the Collection by means of professional conservation and restorations
- create and publish a data-base and on-line catalog
- acquire additional instruments appropriate to the collection by means of gifts and purchases
- enhance community relations by organizing outreach programs for schools in the area and other special groups