Music Special Collections

Montrealer David Edelberg (1939-1989) was by profession the president of his own engineering firm and by nature one of Canada's most passionate Handelians. At the centre of his tireless devotion to Handel's celebrated musical genius lay his efforts to assemble the world's most complete collection of Handel long-playing (LP) records. David Edelberg started collecting in the mid-1970s. Over the subsequent fifteen years the collection grew rapidly, and by 1989 comprised nearly 3,000 sound recordings. A decade into the collection's development David Edelberg chose to revise his purchasing policy to include Handel materials in a variety of other formats. These ranged from scores (including a complete Arnold edition) to ephemera, such as T-shirts and postcards.