The Robin Adams Early Music Collection

Collection of commercially published vinyl LP records that relate to Early Music and particularly viol music. The collection was assembled by Robin Adams, a trustee of The Viola da Gamba Society.

The Viola da Gamba Society website contains a Thematic Index of Music for Viols. This can be found in the following location: http://vdgs.org.uk/thematic.html

Robin Adams was born in Salford in 1939, and was brought up in a southern suburb of Manchester. From a young age Adams showed a keen interest for early music which he discovered through the BBC's Third Programme. Adams started collecting LPs of early music from about 1957 onwards. Later, Adams started to play the viol at evening classes run by Francis Baines and June Baines (of the Jaye consort), he joined the Viola da Gamba Society (VdGS) and volunteered to provide the Society's newsletter with notices of new recordings of viols as they appeared. These developments resulted in the collection developing a stronger emphasis on music for viols. From 1972 (as Adams began working on a discography of viol music for the VdGS), the criterion for the collection became Does any of the tracks have one or more viols on it?; or Was the music on this track intended to be played by a viol or viols?.

See EMC/1 for more details (article in which Robin Adams provides his reflections on the origins and development of the collection).