The Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection contains nearly 1,700 flutes and other wind instruments. The collection includes statuary, iconography, books, music, trade catalogs, tutors, patents, and other materials mostly related to the flute. It includes both Western and nonwestern examples of flutes from around the world, with at least 460 European and American instrument makers represented. Items in the collection date from the 16th to the 20th century.
The world of music is indebted to Dayton C. Miller for his work and for his decision to place his collection at the Library of Congress, the only institution at the time of his bequest willing to honor his condition that it remain intact.
This online presentation includes images of over 1,500 instruments, 33 photographs and other illustrations, and a 17th-century flageolet tutor. In addition, there are accompanying essays and writings about Dayton Miller, his collection, flutes and flute makers.
Dayton C. Miller Collection About the Collection
Dayton C. Miller Collection Collection Items
Thomas Jefferson’s library is the foundation of the collections of the Library of Congress. Congress purchased his library to replace the books that had been destroyed in 1814, when the capitol was burned during the War of 1812. Reflecting Jefferson’s universal interests and knowledge, the acquisition established the broad scope of the Library’s future collections, which, over the years, were enriched by copyright deposits of books, pictures, maps, music, motion pictures, and many other kinds of material. These were supplemented by purchases, some of which were made possible by substantial gifts such as the Music Division’s Coolidge and Whittall foundations. Established primarily to support musical performances, these foundations also extended the scope of the Music Division’s acquisitions to musical instruments, and its activities to broadcasting and the commissioning of new works of both music and dance.
No gift, however, has been so richly diverse in format or comprehensive in its coverage of a subject as the bequest in 1941 by Dayton C. Miller, of his collection of books, prints, photographs, music, correspondence, trade catalogs, statuary, and more than seventeen hundred flutes and other wind instruments. It was Miller’s vision, ahead of its time, that musical instruments, when preserved in their original condition, are invaluable historical documents. In order to learn how old instruments sound, we are far better served, he believed, by replicating them from original specimens than by trying to repair those specimens, thus destroying their archival value in the process.
The new catalog published in this online presentation of the Miller Flute Collection describes the musical instruments in that collection. It is the cumulative, and, at times, collaborative record that has grown over time through the labors of Dayton Miller himself; former Music Division staff members William J. Lichtenwanger, Laura E. Gilliam and more recently, Catherine Folkers, who has made valuable contributions both as former curator of the collection and, independently, as a maker; by staff members Robert E. Sheldon and Carol Lynn Ward Bamford; and by others, principally Mary Jean Simpson, Michael Seyfrit, and Jan Lancaster. We are also indebted to the support and contributions of James Pruett, former Chief of the Music Division, and William Parsons and Robert Palian.
Dayton C. Miller Iconography
Drei Flötenspieler (Three Flute Players) possibly by Andries Pauli, or Pauwels, le vieux, 17th century Dayton C. Miller Collection, Performing Arts Reading Room.
Unknown to many researchers, the Miller iconography collection is an eclectic but important collection of about 850 prints related to wind instruments especially, but the prints include keyboard, string, percussion, and exotic instruments as well. A selection of about 120 prints dating from the fifteenth to twentieth centuries from this iconography collection is presented here for the first time. The Miller musical iconography collection complements Dr. Miller’s world-renowned collection of flutes at the Library of Congress.