David Day

David A. Day has worked as Music Librarian and Curator of Music Special Collections at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah since January 1986. He also teaches the graduate research methodology course in the BYU School of Music. David earned the PhD in musicology from New York University in 2008. His dissertation deals with the annotated violon répétiteur, or markings in the violin conductor’s part used in the production of early 19th-century French ballets. The dissertation addresses ways in which ballet music was written to underscore specific dramatic action as evidenced in the correlation between the staging instructions found in the violin conductor’s part and specific dramatic devices of the accompanying music.

Prior to completing the PhD, Day earned an MS in Library and Information Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1985) and the BA in music theory and MA in musicology from Brigham Young University (1978 and 1981).

He completed a six-year term as Chair of the Bibliography Commission of the International Association of Music Libraries in July 2011. He also served as Founding Chair of the IAML Subject Commission on Archives (1987-1993) and Chair of the Working Group on the International Registration of Music Archives (2000-2005). Among other positions held in the Music Library Association, Day served as the Chair of the Archives Roundtable from 1993 to 1995. He published two indexes for the RIPM Series (The Message Bird and New York Musical World).

David maintains a website and database devoted to the bibliography of music and dance reference sources that lists more than 13,000 items approximately 2,100 of which are fully critiqued (see URL: musref.byu.edu ). He also created an online index of opera and ballet primary sources that are available in digital format for free online. This index, referred to as OBPS, now indexes more than 50,000 items. Day’s research interests remain focused in dramatic music of early 19th-century France and Belgium. He is nearing completion of a descriptive catalogue of the opera and ballet performance materials from the Théâtre de la Monnaie currently housed at the Archives de la Ville de Bruxelles. He especially enjoys interacting with students and guiding them toward research projects based in critical analysis of primary sources.