UNIVERSITY NEWS - JUNE 2003

Press contact: Elfriede Lynch
(561) 297-3020

June 11, 2003

THOMAS PITFIELD CENTENARY NOTED AT FAU

Florida Atlantic University's S.E. Wimberly Library is currently exhibiting a number of items from its Thomas Pitfield Archive in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Pitfield's birth. Though he thought he would be best remembered as a poet, Thomas Barron Pitfield (1903 - 1999) is best known as one of Britain's great twentieth-century composers. He also dabbled in cabinetmaking, bookbinding, calligraphy and watercolor, prompting one English newspaper to describe him as "Jack of all trades, master of most."

The Thomas Pitfield Archive, which is housed in the Richard Beattie Davis Music Collection at the Wimberly Library's Special Collections and Archives, is the only American archive of Pitfield's work. It contains over fifty music publications, several books, and much of Pitfield's artwork. Pitfield's main collection of original manuscripts, illustrations, designs and various publications is now at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England, an institution with which the composer was associated for many decades.

The Thomas Pitfield Centenary exhibit will be on display through July 23, 2003, at the Wimberly Library's Administrative Offices, second floor west. Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road in Boca Raton. The Pitfield Archive is available by appointment only through the Library's Special Collections and Archives department. For more information, call the department at (561) 297-3787, or email lysca@fau.edu.
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MEDIA CONTACT: Stacia Smith
561/297-2971; ssmith@fau.edu