http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/eadmus.mu011019 Laurence Picken Papers Processed by the Music Division of the Library of Congress Music Division, Library of Congress
Washington, D.C.
2011 Guides to Special Collections in the Music Division of the Library of Congress

Catalog Record: http://lccn.loc.gov/2011570511

Finding aid encoded by Library of Congress Music Division, 2011 Finding aid written in English. 2012 June Chris Hartten revised this finding aid in June 2012 to include additional materials. Collection Summary Laurence Picken Papers 1900-2001 (bulk 1936-1999) ML31.P53 Picken, Laurence Ernest Rowland approximately 22,400 items 70 containers 38.5 linear feet Collection material chiefly in English and Chinese. Music Division Library of Congress
Washington, D.C.
Laurence Picken was a British zoologist and musicologist who specialized in Asian, particularly Chinese, music. The collection primarily contains research materials, correspondence, writings, publications, and other items related to Picken's career and his study of East Asian musical traditions, especially those of the Tang Court. In addition, there are manuscript and published scores for Picken's musical compositions, transcriptions of traditional East Asian music, and some photographs. Selected Search Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the Library's online catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically therein.

 People Fukushima, Kazuo, 1930- Picken, Laurence Ernest Rowland--Archives. Picken, Laurence Ernest Rowland--Correspondence. Picken, Laurence Ernest Rowland--Manuscripts. Picken, Laurence Ernest Rowland--Photographs. Picken, Laurence Ernest Rowland. Picken, Laurence Ernest Rowland. Picken, Laurence Ernest Rowland. Music from the Tang Court. Picken, Laurence Ernest Rowland. Musical works. Selections. Subjects Music--Asia--History and criticism. Music--China--History and criticism. Music--East Asia. Music--Japan--History and criticism. Music--Manuscripts. Musical instruments--East Asia. Musical instruments--Turkey. Musicologists--England. Tōgaku. Titles Musica Asiatica. Form/Genre Articles. Correspondence. Drafts (Documents) Essays. Lectures. Notebooks. Notes. Photographic prints. Administrative Information Provenance

Gift, Laurence Picken, 2002.

 Accruals

No further accruals are expected.

 Processing History

The Laurence Picken Papers were processed by Megan Murph, Christopher Hartten, Anthony Edwards, and Thomas Barrick in 2011. Thomas Barrick coded the finding aid for EAD format in 2011.

 Transfers

Sound and video recordings from the Laurence Picken Papers have been transferred to the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division. An inventory of this material is available in the Music Division's collection file.

 Copyright Status

Materials from the Laurence Picken Papers are governed by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, U.S.C.) and other applicable international copyright laws.

 Access and Restrictions

The Laurence Picken Papers are open to research. Researchers are advised to contact the Music Division prior to visiting in order to determine whether the desired materials will be available at that time.

Certain restrictions to use or copying of materials may apply.

 Preferred Citation

Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: [item, date, container number], Laurence Picken Papers, Music Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Biographical Note

British zoologist and musicologist Laurence Ernest Rowland Picken was born on July 16, 1909 in Nottingham, England. He studied piano as a child, and composed music during the mid-1920s and 1930s. In 1928, he won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge and studied natural sciences. During the 1930s, he held a Rockefeller Studentship in the Geneva School of Chemistry for two years where he became fluent in French and German and conducted groundbreaking scientific research. He finished his Ph.D. in 1935. In 1944, he became a fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, and in 1946 assistant director of research in the zoology faculty, spending the next twenty years researching and teaching biology. In 1944, he joined Joseph Needham’s scientific mission to China where he studied Chinese music and learned to play the zither. In 1959, Picken was appointed visiting professor of zoology at Washington University. He published his landmark book The Organization of Cells and other Organisms the following year in 1960.

Though employed as a scientist, Picken published his first musical paper in 1950 on the identification of an unknown fugue by Bach. His reputation as a musicologist grew along with his knowledge and understanding of Asian culture and he continued to publish papers and encyclopedia entries on Asian music throughout 1950s. Picken served as editor for the journal of the International Folk Music Council in the 1960s. In 1966, he was appointed assistant director of research in the faculty of oriental studies at Cambridge. In 1977, he started the journal Musica Asiatica which he would co-edit until 1984. Picken donated over 700 musical instruments to the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge in 1977.

The music of the Chinese Tang and Song dynasties was the major focus of Picken's lifelong scholarship. In 1972, he began to transcribe and analyze pieces from the secular Tang court repertory in Japan which led to a projected 25-volume series Music from the Tang Court (1981-2000), of which Picken would complete only seven volumes. Picken also wrote on the music of Turkey, central Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. In 1975, he published The Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey, a comprehensive study of Turkish instruments. In 1990, Picken and N.J. Nickson supervised and directed a program of Tang and Song dynasty transcriptions at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music. Starting in 1998, Picken was also involved with the Ancient Asian Music Project at the Library of Congress. He died at the age of 97 on March 16, 2007, in Cambridge, England.

Scope and Content Note

The Laurence Picken Papers span the period 1900-2001 with the majority of materials dating from 1936-1999. The materials include project files, research materials, business and personal correspondence, published and unpublished writings, scores of Picken's own compositions, and photographs.

Materials in the Project Files series are centered around Picken's studies in East Asian music and range from the 1950s through the mid-1990s. These contain essay notes and drafts, translations, concert programs, miscellaneous research materials, instrument collection files, and a handful of personal files. Picken's articles and research materials for Musica Asiatica and his influential Music from the Tang Court stand out as items of particular interest. His original folder titles have been used where appropriate, although it is possible that some contain alternative or erroneous spellings and transliterations.

The Correspondence series consists of personal and business letters sent or received by Laurence Picken. Many of the letters relating to his activities discuss aspects of Picken's collaborative studies and publications between 1936 and 2001. The letters to his family include postcards from his travels abroad.

The Writings series contains articles, essays, and lectures by Picken, his notebooks, and books written for Picken. In addition, there are offprints by Picken, his students, and colleagues that were used in research. Materials in the Music series include manuscript and printed scores of Picken's compositions, dating from the 1920s and 1930s. There are also transcriptions of traditional East Asian music made by Picken and others between the 1950s and 2000. Rounding out the collection is the small Photographs series which contains images of Picken, traditional Chinese and Japanese musical instruments, and various performances of world music, dating from the 1930s to 1990s.

 Organization of the Laurence Picken Papers

The Laurence Picken Papers are organized in five series:

Project Files, circa 1950-1999 Correspondence, 1900-2001 Writings, circa 1930-2000 Music, circa 1923-2000 Photographs, circa 1930-circa 1990 http://lccn.loc.gov/2011570511 Container List Container Contents 1-18, 64, 66 Project Files, circa 1950-1999

Chiefly research materials related to published papers and scholarly topics of interest to Picken. Includes photocopies of various original Chinese documents, drafts of publications, correspondence, and notes.

Arranged alphabetically by folder title. Picken's original captions have been used whenever possible, although these may contain alternative or erroneous spellings of words. Article titles in the container list may not reflect those of actual published materials.

 1/1 "Acculturation and the Tōgaku repertory" (Picken/Marett) 1/2 Afterwards for Picken, Adkins, Page 9/1 "An Afghan quail-lure of typological and acoustic interest" 1/3 "Anatolian drum and shawm come to a Greek smuggler's village" 1/4 Ancient Chinese songs 9/2 "Ancient matters" - Koji-ruien 9/3 Ang Kunshan 1/5 Arthur Cooper's lecture and correspondence 1/6 Bach quotations from the 18th Century 9/4 Banshikichō 1/7 Bibliographic data on key manuscripts 1/8 British Council: "Science in Chungking" 1/9-11 Bugaku 1/12-13 Burmese music 9/5-6 Burmese music - draft papers and correspondence with Muriel Williamson 1/14 Catalogue of documents of music from the collection of the Fushimi-no-miya family 10/1 Champa 10/2 Ch'ao-chou requiem 10/3 Ch'ên 1/15 Ch'in schools 1/16-20 Chiang K'uei 1/21 Children's sound producing toys 1/22 China 1/23 Chinese Buddist music 1/24 Chinese friction chordophones 1/25-26 Chinese folksongs 1/27-29 Chinese music 1/30 Chinese texts relative to Toroden 1/31 Chū Ōga Ryūteki Yōroku-fu 10/4 Chuang-chên 1/32 Concert programs 1/33 Conflation and analysis 2/1-2 Correspondence and translations by Ishibashi/Fukushima 2/3 Dai Nihon shi 2/4 Daoist white-stone [i.e. White Stone Daoist]: Jiang Kui - collected songs and pieces 2/5 Double-sided printing of Sadachō items 2/6 Dunhuang lute music (Rockwell) 10/5 Dunhuang piba-pu 2/7 Encyclopedia Britannica 2/8 Ethiopic liturgical music 2/9 "The fate of Tang music in Japan" 2/10-12 Fengshen Zhuan 2/13, 10/6 "Finger techniques for the zithers sô-no-koto and kin in Heian times" (Mitani/Picken) 10/7 First transcriptions of Meiji and Shōwa printed shō tablatures 3/14 Fragments of Fengxue 3/15 "Frequency doubling chordophones" (Adkins/Williams/Flowers/Picken) 3/16 Fujiwara genealogies 3/17-18 "The functional names of notes in Modai note-sets" 11/1 Gagaku 11/2 Gagaku (Harich-Schneider) 2/19 Gakka-roku (excerpts) 2/20 Gidayu 2/21 Gogenfu (copy of F.R.W.'s transcripts) 11/3 GoGen Kin-Fu 2/22 Notes on gougche-pu derived from Yang YenLin and Zhang Shipeng 2/23 Guan's comments on Tōgaku titles in Hakuga nofue-fu 2/24 Haloun: notes for the burning of the books 11/4 Hayashi Kenzō 2/25 Hirade 2/26-27 Honorary doctorate, 1988 3/1 Hosho-fu 3/2 Hōshō ritsu-kan 11/5 Hyōjō 12/1 Ichikotsuchō 3/3 Instrument collection 12/2 "The instrumentarium of a village in Northeast Thailand" 3/4 Jao Tsung-I preface, 1990 3/5 Japanese historical linguistics 12/3 JCYR 3/6 "Jew's harps and mouth organs" 3/7 Jiang Kui 3/8 Jiaofang-ji 3/9 Jiegulu 64/1 Jinchi-yoroku 3/10 Junior sinologues 3/11-12 Kaichū-fu 3/13-14 "A keyboard fugue by Bach" 3/15 Kikutei: "Pieces for biwa, notated in calendrically correct tunings, from the Kikutei-ke Monjo of the Heian Hakubutsukan" 3/16 Ko-fu ritsu 13/1-2 Korean court dance under Sejong and Sejo 3/17 Kucha music influence 3/18 Kunaichō shoryōbu 3/19 Kyōkun shō 13/3 Libo songs in Gi-shi Gakufu 3/20-22, 13/4 Library of Congress exhibition, 1999 3/23 "A lion dance of the Song Dynasty" 3/24 Mabuchi Usaburō 3/25 "The magic of children's sound-producing toys" 3/26 Mahmut Ragip Gazimihal 3/27 "Making a Khaein" (Adkins/Page/Picken) 3/28 Marett transcription of Chōkōraku 3/29 Material from "Ancient echos of China" 3/30 "Midnight music" (Yebanyue) 4/1 Miscellaneous articles 4/2 Miscellaneous materials in Chinese 14/1, 64/2 Miscellaneous music in Chinese 4/3-24, 14/2-4, 64/3 Miscellaneous research materials

Includes appendices, bibliographies, examples, figures, and various documents in Chinese

 4/25 Mongolian articles 4/26 "Music for a lion-dance" of the Song Dynasty 5, 6/1-11, 15, 64/4-5 Music of the Tang Court 4/27 Music Research Institute of Chicago (Peking) 6/12-21 Musica Asiatica articles 6/22, 14/5 "Musical implications of Chinese songtext with unequal lines and the significance of nonsense syllables, with special reference to artsongs of Song Dynasty" 6/23 "Musical inter-relationships between Tang Chinese compositions; Three items with titles in the names of imperial military leaders" 6/24 Musikethnologische Jahresbibliographie Europas 16/1 Namguan 6/25 Namguan Patsy Choo 6/26 Nawa contents 6/27 Neopolitan cries 6/28-29 Notes 6/30 Notes on Hichiriki scores: Nakahara-roseishō and others 6/31 Notes on mensural notation in Ō-dai 6/32 Notes on mouth organ scoring 6/33 Notes on music manuscripts purhcased by Elling Eide 16/2 "Notes on some important Togaku manuscripts in Tenri University Library" 6/34 Notes on tablature system of Kofu/Hōshōfu (Ritsu/Ryokan) 16/3 Ojikichō 7/1 Okugaki 7/2 Personalia and CV 7/3 Pipa techniques and terms 7/4 Pipafu 66 Picken Collection of Musical Instruments, Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology Two-volume card index 7/5 Picken donations 7/6 Picken library 7/7 Picken's criticism of Robert T. Mok's "Ancient musical instruments unearthed from the number one Han tomb at Ma Want Tui, Changsha" 7/8 Plainsong notes 7/9 The 'plucked drums' 7/10 Porcelain 7/11 Publication agreements 7/12 R.H. van Gulik's bronze 17/1 Qui Jingsun 7/13 Radio talk / Chinese 7-string zither 7/14 Rakusaidō Gagaku manuscripts (Kazuo Fukushima) 7/15 Reviews and acknowledgements 7/16 Reviews by Laurence Picken 7/17 Revue bibliographique de sinologie 7/18-20 Ruisō-chiyō 17/2 Ryō-ō 7/21-22 Ryūmeishō 7/23 Samaifu glossary and definitions 7/24 Samaifu copy of Maifu of Shunnōden, Satto and Juha 7/25 Sandai jitsuroku 7/26 Sango-yōroku 7/27 Second Samaifu copy from Tsuji sensei 17/3 Secret dragon flute score 7/28 Semsi Yastiman 17/4 SGYR 7/29 Shanghai Conservatory 64/8 "The shapes of the Shi Jing song texts and their musical implications" 7/30 Shi Jing 17/7 Shi Jing paper (Musica Asiatica, 1977) 17/5-6 Shinnō hajinraku 7/31 Shinraryō-ō Sairyōshū 18/1 Shō and Bisa part parallelism (Shō part is cantus firmus) 7/32 Song texts 7/33 Sōnokoto tunings 18/2 The sound of Areston (Gershevitch) 7/34 "The sound producing instrumentarium of a village in North-East Thailand" 7/35 Specimen tune in all Chinese modes at same pitch, both pentatonic and heptatonic 7/36 "String/table angles in harps, from the third millenium BC to the present" 7/37-38 Taigenshō Kyō Kunshō 18/3, 7/39 Taiheiraku 7/40 T'ang dance notation 7/41 Taoist ritual music 7/42 Teheran congress 1961 7/43 Thai mouth organs, correspondence with Peter Bee papers 7/44 Thai music "The making of a Rhāen" correspondence 7/45 Tōdai-ji Yōroku Kaigen-e 7/46 Tōgaku pieces transcribed 7/47 Toyonaga Satomi papers 8/1-3 Transcriptions from Festival of GI 8/4 "Tunes of T'ang date for the 'get trasure song'?" (Jones/Picken) 8/5 Tunings and pitch measurements (Ruttner) 8/6 Turkey 8/7 Turkish reviews and letters 8/8 Tweleve ritual melodies of the T'ang Dynasty 8/9 'Ulili 8/10 Utsucho - Monogatari; also copy of Noguchi's paper on Utsucho-Monogatari 8/11 "Water birds on river islands" 8/12 Wang Zhaojun 8/13 Wamyō ruijūshō 8/14 "The war of the musicians or lives of canonised spirits of the Taoist Heaven" (Zhu Chanyu) 8/15 Wei-shi Yuepu 8/16 Xeroxes of small books 8/17 Yuefu 8/18 Yuefu shiqi - song structure, length and rhymes 8/19 Yuefu zalu 8/20-22 YFST 8/23 Zhong Yang, Yin Yue, Xue Yuan, Xue Bao 8/24 Zhu Xi 8/25 Zoku-Kyōkunshō 8/26 Zokukoto: Rokudan no shirabe nofu 19-52 Correspondence, 1900-2001

Chiefly letters concerning scholarly projects, family matters, and travel.

Arranged in four subseries: letters to Picken; letters from Picken; family correspondence; and related correspondence. Each subseries arranged chronologically.

 Letters to Picken 19/1-7 1935-1971 20/1-8 1972-1975 21/1-12 1976-1981 22/1-9 1982-1987 23/1-8 1992 24/1-6 1993-1994 25/1-7 1995-1996 26/1-4 1997 27/1-7 1998 28/1-9 1999-2001 29/1 Foreign language letters, 1968-1998 29/2, 30/1-2 Undated Letters from Picken 31/1-7 1936-1972 32/1-6 1973-1975 33/1-6 1975-1976 34/1-5 1977 35/1-7 1978-1979 36/1-6 1979-1980 37/1-6 1981-1982 38/1-6 1982-1983 39/1-6 1984 40/1-6 1985 41/1-4 1986 42/1-4 1987 43/1-8 1988-1989 44/1-9 1990-1991 45/1-4 1992 46/1-5 1993 47/1-8 1994-1995 47/9-10 1996 48/1-7 1997-1998 49/1-9 1999-2001 and undated Family Correspondence 50/1-2 Family to Picken, 1939-1945 51/1-11 Picken to family, 1950-1990s Related Correspondence 52/1-8 1900-2001 and undated 53-57, 67-70 Writings, circa 1930-2000

Articles, essays, lectures, and notebooks. Most materials have accompanying correspondence and notes. Includes offprints of works by various authors (including Picken) used in the course of research.

Arranged in five subseries: lectures; notebooks; papers edited by Picken; offprints about Chinese music; and books written for Picken. Each subseries is arranged alphabetically by title, author, or subject.

 Lectures 53/1-2 Chinese music 53/3 "Chinese music of a thousand years ago" 53/4 "A comparative journey of the musics of the world" 53/5 "The documentary history of the Tōgaku repertory" 53/6 "Micro-ornament" 53/7 Miscellaneous lectures 53/11 "Music aspects of transcription and analysis of the Tōgaku repertory" 53/8 "Music at the Tang Court" (Hume) 53/9 "Music for a Tang Dynasty ballet of the 7th century" 53/10 "Music from the Tang Court" (Saibara) 53/12 "A musical background to treasures of Ancient China" 53/13 "Musical instruments in Turkey" 53/14 "Musical survivals of the Tang and Sung Dynasties" 53/15 Seoul, South Korea 53/16 "Tang music of the Sung Dynasty" 53/17 "Towards the archaic music of pre-Nora Japan" 53/18 "Turkish folk music and musical instruments" 53/19 "Turkish music" 53/20 "Turkish poetry" 53/21-23 University of Washington, Seattle 53/14 Unidentified Notebooks 53/25 Asian Music Club 54/1, 67/1-3 Asian notebooks, 1972-1974, 1980 67/4 Biographical notebook Chiefly business cards, pamphlets, and photographs 67/5 Buddhist music 67/6 Ch'au-chou requiem service 53/26 Chinese and Sino-Japanese notebooks 53/27-28, 68/1 Miscellaneous notebooks 68/2 Taoist music 53/29-30 Tōgaku notebooks: draft catalogue of pieces, movements, and occurrence in manuscripts 68/3-5, 69/1-5 Turkish notebooks Papers Edited by Picken 54/2 Blench, Roger. "The morphology and distribution of Sub-Saharan musical instruments of North African, Middle Eastern, and Asian origin" 54/3-4 Craig, Dale A. "Ancient legacy of music: a Min Dynasty collection of Chin songs" 54/5 Fletcher, Peter. World musics in context 54/6 Fukushima, Kazuo. "Descriptive catalogue of the Rakusaidō-Gagaku manuscripts in the Research Archives for Japanese Music of Ueno Gakuen College" 54/7-9 Marett, Allan J.

Miscellaneous essays and draft of dissertation

 54/10 Miyoko, Kôkawa. "A method of improvising music at school" 54/11-12 Wei, Deng. "Historical and stylistic development in the Chinese four-stringed lute Pipa and in Pipa music" 54/13 Widdess, Richard. "The reconstruction of early Indian music from notation" 54/14 Williamson, Muriel C. "The correlation between speech-tones of text-syllables and their musical settings in a Burmese classical song" Offprints about Chinese Music 70 1936-1975 Four bound volumes of Picken's articles

Includes several earlier articles on cellular biology

 54/15-19 "A" - "C" 55/1-19 "D" - "Picard" 56/1-16 "Picken" - "Z" Books Written for Picken 57 Three bound essays in honor of Dr. Laurence E. R. Picken 58-62, 65 Music, circa 1923-2000

Manuscript and printed scores of original Picken compositions and transcriptions of traditional East Asian music.

Arranged alphabetically by title of work or folder title.

 Original Compositions 58/1 Canon, waltz and jig 58/2 Composition sketchbooks, 1923-1927 58/3 Composition sketchbooks, 1928-1936 58/4 Compositions and sketches 58/5 Concert for two pianos 59/1 Five songs 1934 59/2 Four songs 59/3 Jabuke and Groždja 59/4 Moralité du petit chaperon rouge 59/5 Prelude to foreign parts 59/6 Les Saintes Maries de la mer 59/7 Sonata movement: Slovenja 59/8 Sonatina Transcriptions 60/1-2 "The Emperor destroys the military formation" 60/3 Folk dances choreographed and notated by Liu Fengxue Essen (1971), under Albrecht Knust 60/4 "Haguga no fue-fu" (Marett) 65/1 "Korean court dance" (Siyong mubo) 60/5-6 "Lion dance" 61/1-3 Miscellaneous transcriptions 61/4, 65/2 "Music for a thousand autumns" 65/3 "Myit-zu thaká nat-pàn Bwe" 61/5 "Namguan" 65/4-6 "O-dai hajinraku" 61/6 "Occidental diversions around an Oriental tune" (Albright) 62/1 "Sandai-en" (Arthur Cooper's lecture) 62/2 "Shi Jing" 62/3 "T'ai P'ing Yüeh/Taiheiraku" 62/4 "Toraden" 60/1-2 "Tsuwano" 61/7 Walker, Robert compositions 65/7 "Waves of the blue sea" 62/6 "The wine is clear" 61/8 Wolpert, Rembrandt F., 1975 63, 65 Photographs, circa 1930-circa 1990

Individual and group portraits, musical instruments, world music performances, and other images. Includes negatives.

Arranged alphabetically by subject.

 63/1-6 Instruments and performers 63/7-8 Miscellany 65/8 Picken, alone or with others, 1930s-1960s 65/9 Stages making a Shō reed