Duck Son and Pinker closed abruptly today. I was an occasional customer for sheet music and CDs, although it was never my first choice for CDs and I sometimes found the staff didn’t know their way round the sheet music stock (though this hasn’t happened recently).
There is another instrument shop in Bath, so we can still cope if the mouthpiece gets stuck in my son’s trumpet again. I realise that CD sales face stiff competition from the internet, but surely a place the size of Bath and with this city’s musical culture could support a sheet music shop? Or are sheet music sales subsidised in practice by sales of CDs? (And now I think of it, Manchester city centre lost one of its two sheet music shops in the mid-1990’s.)
You should invest in a Bobcat mouthpiece extractor or suggest that your school buys one.
Brian Jordan’s in Cambridge is apparently struggling too, so if we can’t support a sheet music shop I’m not that surprised Bath can’t.
One thing Brian Jordan’s and DS & P have in common is the recent death of their long-term owner. Jordan’s is also in competition with the music department of Heffer’s, though I don’t know what that is like these days.
Did Heffer’s ever sell sheet music? I don’t think they do now anyway. Their CD shop is still there and doing fine, but Jordan’s isn’t in that business.
Actually yes, Heffer’s sheet music was mostly a few standard choral scores. When I was in Cambridge there was also The Cambridge Music Shop as an alternative.
Forsyth is still there in the centre of Manchester, selling not just sheet music, but everything related to music from grand pianos to musical themed cufflinks. That’s where I buy obscure opera scores for my brother.
Gábor is quite right, which makes me wonder why I have practically no memory of Forsyth’s. I can’t even visualise the interior. The shop I was thinking of was on the first floor of a precinct somewhere at the western end of the city centre, and had clearly moved there from somewhere else, to judge by the age of its stock.