| Level | Fonds |
| Finding Number (Click this to view full catalogue structure) | SH |
| Title | Shaw-Hellier Collection |
| Extent | 59 boxes |
| Date | 17th century-1908 |
| Description | This catalogue details the extensive music archive containing 860 volumes known as the Shaw-Hellier collection. Sir Samuel Hellier had a passionate interest in music and the items in this archive were collected mainly by him in the eighteenth century. The collection mainly dates 18th-19th century, although there are a few items dated 17th century and several as recent as 1908.
There is a mix of manuscript and printed items within the collection. Some of the volumes contain a single score or piece of music, other volumes contain multiple pieces by different composers. Most of this Shaw-Hellier collection dates from the eighteenth century although successive generations have added to the collection sporadically and there are also a number of early nineteenth century items.
Most reports suggest Samuel Hellier was born in 1736. Samuel, an orphan at the age of fifteen, inherited from his father the Wodehouse, a country house near Wombourne, Staffordshire. On his death in 1784, Samuel Hellier left the property and his music manuscript collection to his friend, Reverend Thomas Shaw, minister at St. John’s Wolverhampton. As a condition of the inheritance, Shaw changed his surname in 1786 to Shaw-Hellier.
The Shaw-Hellier collection contains a significant number of works by Handel, transcribed by expert Oxford copyists from original sources in the 1750s. The collection also contains contemporary manuscript copies of material by Purcell, printed copies of Stanley, Fenton, Corelli, Sammartini, Geminiani, Arne, J. C. Bach etc. There are some items which do not appear to have survived elsewhere, such as the Chinzer Symphonies, op. 9, or have survived randomly such as the collection of published works of William Felton. There are also collections of dance tunes, such as Walsh's Country Dance Tunes, and of instrument tutors. Samuel Hellier had a special liking for the bassoon and horn, and there are numerous items specifically for these instruments.
A later 19th century descendant, Colonel Thomas Brandon-Shaw-Hellier, was Commandant of the Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall, and the collection contains some interesting military material, presumably added by him.
It is thought that a lot of the other non-Handel manuscript material also dates from 1750s-1760s. Researchers have largely been unable to narrow down the dates further, although there are a few instances where Sir Samuel Hellier has inscribed and dated certain manuscripts. |
| Notes | Printed items within this collection at the time of cataloguing by Ian Ledsham were checked against a number of bibliographical reference sources. The most referenced was ‘The catalogue of printed music in the British Library to 1980’ (CPM). A full list of bibliographical abbreviations found within this catalogue is given below:
Bib.Nat. – Bibliotheque Nationale (France). Departement de la musique. Catalogues du departement de la musique [Cambridge]: Chadwyck-Healey, 1990.
BREITKOPF - The Breitkopt Thematic Catalogue: the Six Parts and Sixteen Supplements 1762-1787. Edited...by Barry S. Brook. New York: Dover, 1966.
BLC – The British Library general catalogue of printed books to 1975. London: C. Bingley; New York: K.G. Saur, 1979.
CPM - The catalogue of printed music in the British Library to 1980. London: K.G. Saur, 1981-1987.
Gooch – Gooch, Bryan N.S. and Thatcher, David. A Shakespeare music catalogue. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.
Hoboken – Hoboken, Anthony van. Joseph Haydn: thematisch-bibliographisches Werkverzeichnis. Mainz: Schott, 1957-1971.
Kochel – Kochel, Ludwig. Chronologisch-thematische Verzeichnis satlicher Tonwerke Wolfgang Amada Mozarts. 3. Aufl. bearbeitet von Alfred Einstein. Leipzig: Breitkopf and Hartel, 1937.
LaRue – LaRue, Jan. A catalogue of 18th-century symphonies. Vol. 1: Thematic identifier. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988.
New Grove – The New Grove dictionary of music and musicians. Edited by Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan, 1980.
RISM – Repertoire international des sources musicales. Serie A / I: Einzeldrucke vor 1800. Redaktion: Karlheinz Schlager Kassel: Barenreiter, 1971-1981.
RISM 18th cent. – Repertoire international des sources musicales. Serie B/ II: Recueils imprimes XVIIIe siècle…Sous la direction de Francois Lesure. Munchen-Duisburg: Henle, 1964
SH - SH, space and a number (e.g. SH 1) if used in the description field indicates where an item carries a former reference number originally allocated by Sir Shaw Hellier. Not to be confused by the SH/ number (e.g. SH/1) in the finding number field used now, which is the correct reference number of the item to be used today.
SmiHH – Smith, William C. (assisted by Charles Humphries). Handel: a descriptive catalogue of the early editions. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1970.
SmiHW - Smith, William C. and Humphries, Charles. A bibliography of the musical works published by the firm of John Walsh during the years 1721-1760. London: The Bibliographical Society, 1968.
Stieger – Stieger, Franz. Opernlexikon. Tutzing: Schneider, 1975-1983.
Warner – Warner, Thomas E. An annotated bibliography of woodwind instruction books, 1600-1830. Detroit: Information Co-ordinators, 1967. (2nd printing 1974). (Detroit studies in music bibliography; 11).
Wolf – Wolf, Eugene, K. The symphonies of Johann Stamitz. Utrecht: Bohn, Scheltema and Holkema; The Hague: Nijhoff, 1981.
Zimmerman – Zimmerman, Franklin B. Henry Purcell 1659-1695; an analytical catalogue of his music. London: Macmillan, 1963.
Text in the title field for each entry has been largely based on the catalogue by Ian Ledsham. In his catalogue, he used the composer’s surname and initial, and a filing title/preferred title of the piece of music written in square brackets. |
| Arrangement | Samuel Hellier had, during his lifetime, supervised the binding and arrangement of his music collection, and had numbered items in his care. His original catalogue numbers are indicated in the current catalogue in the notes field, e.g. 'Former ref: SH 1'. Another renumbering had been essential though as items had been added to the collection after Hellier's lifetime and the original numbering scheme was incomplete.
When the Shaw-Hellier collection was transferred to at the University of Birmingham, Peter Ward Jones had numbered the collection more fully to aid the drawing up of an inventory. The numbering and cataloguing were then further enhanced by Ian Ledsham in the mid 1980s-1990s during his work to produce the published 'A catalogue of the Shaw-Hellier Collection'.
There is a concordance within Ian Ledsham printed 'A catalogue of the Shaw-Hellier Collection' linking Samuel Hellier’s original catalogue numbers to the present-day reference numbers, thereby enabling researchers to identify and recreate Hellier’s own library arrangement. |
| Language | English |
| Finding Aids | 'A catalogue of the Shaw-Hellier Collection' compiled by Ian Ledsham, published by Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot, 1997, and 1999. This published catalogue is available in the searchroom at the Cadbury Research Library. Ledsham's descriptions were added to the Cadbury Research Library's online catalogue in 2025 for ease of searching the material.
An online version of part of the catalogue can be viewed at: https://archive.org/details/catalogueofshawh0000leds/mode/2up?q=%22shaw-hellier%22 (Link correct 2023) |
| Access Status | Open |
| Physical Description | Samuel Hellier took an interest in the binding and storage of his music collection, but to save cost, he often bound together separately published items. Where this has occurred, the items within a bound volume have been assigned a single SH finding reference number, but all the individual scores or parts within that volume have been listed in the catalogued entry. |
| Administrative History | Samuel Hellier was reportedly born 1736, though some have suggested 1737 or 1738. He inherited the Wodehouse estate at Wombourne, Staffordshire, aged 15, and died in 1784. Most of the Shaw-Hellier collection was collected by Samuel Hellier. After his death, the estate and the music collection passed to Reverend Thomas Shaw, Vicar of Wolverhampton, on condition that he changed his name to Shaw-Hellier. It is thought little was added to the collection by Thomas Shaw apart from a copy of Sternhold and Hopkins (SH/278), and probably the other liturgical items within the collection.
Colonel Thomas Brandon Shaw-Hellier was also known to have added items to the collection. He was Commandant of the Royal Military School of Music at Kneller Hall from 1887-1892, and was also Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Irish Dragoon Guards. His interest lay in military music, and the collection contains some notable examples of this such as 'The Young Drummer's Assistant' (SH/610), and 'Drum Beating' (SH/287). There are also two substantial manuscripts of military band arrangements made by Hermann Eckersberg, c1830s-40s.
Information taken from 'A catalogue of the Shaw-Hellier Collection', by Ian Ledsham. |
| Custodial History | In 1986 the Shaw-Hellier collection was deposited in the Music Library at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, and it was still housed there at the time 'A catalogue of the Shaw-Hellier Collection' was compiled by Ian Ledsham who was the Barber Librarian. The collection was later transferred to the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham. |