The collection is open to the public and is available for academic study by appointment. There are frequent gallery events and special exhibitions. More than a thousand instruments by important English, French and German makers, are on display, showing the musical and mechanical development of wind and percussion instruments from the Renaissance to the current day.[1][citation needed]
The Bate Collection is additionally the home of the Reginald Morley-Pegge Memorial Collection of Horns and other Brass and Woodwind Instruments; the Anthony Baines Collection; the Edgar Hunt Collection of Recorders and other instruments; the Jean Henry Collection, the Taphouse Keyboard Loans; the Roger Warner Keyboard Collection; the Michael Thomas Keyboard Collection; a number of instruments from the Jeremy Montagu Collection; a complete workshop of the English bow-maker William C Retford, as well as a small collection of Bows formed in his memory, the Wally Horwood Collection of books and recordings, and other instruments acquired by purchase and gift.[1]
This oil painting of Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) is presently in the collection.
An album, 'Voices From The Past, Vol. 2: Instruments of The Bate Collection' was released in 2015.[2]
History
The collection is named after Philip Bate[3] who began giving his collection of musical instruments to the University of Oxford in 1963,[4] on the condition that it was used for teaching and was provided with a specialist curator to care for and lecture on it.[5] The collection also houses an archive of his papers. Dr Emanuela Vai [1] leads on all conservation, research and curatorial aspects at the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments.
Bate Collection of Musical Instruments (former and current Curators and Conservators)
Dr Philip Bate; Dr Horace Fitzpatrick; Dr Anthony Baines; Dr Jeremy Montagu; Dr Hélèn La Rue; Mr Andy Lamb; Dr Emanuela Vai