ABSTRACT
The Bate Collection of Musical Instruments is part of the faculty of music at the University of Oxford. Opening in 1970, it originated with the gift of Philip Bate of three hundred European orchestral wind instruments. Bate was a leading organologist and one of the founder members of the Galpin Society, an international institution dedicated to the study of musical instruments (Arnold-Foster & La Rue 1993; Montagu 2000). One of the conditions of the gift was that the collection should be made available for judicious use by scholars. Bate was the author of a definitive volume on the history of orchestral musical instruments, and many of the instruments in the gift had been used as examples in his work. It was considered important that future researchers should have access to this primary source material.
