William Barclay Squire
Squire in 1904

William Barclay Squire (16 October 1855 – 13 January 1927) was a British musicologist, librarian and librettist.^[1]

William Barclay Squire was a devoted music enthusiast. He spent 35 years of his life (1885-1920) working for the British Museum, where he took charge of the collections of the music department and added many antiquarian publications to it. He was also music critic for The Saturday Review between 1888 and 1894.^[2]

Squire prepared the publishing of the Catalogue of Printed Music before 1801 (edited in 1912) and negotiated the deposit of the Royal Music Collection, for which he prepared the catalogue. He contributed numerous articles to the Encyclopædia Britannica of 1911, to the Dictionary of National Biography and to the Dictionary of Music and Musicians.^[3]

Occasionally, Squire acted as a librettist. His main work was the libretto for The Veiled Prophet, a Romantic Opera in 3 acts composed by Charles Villiers Stanford, adapted from the homonymous ballad in Thomas Moore's oriental romance Lalla Rookh, published 1890.^[4]

• Vienna Café

• Cobbe, Hugh (2006). "Squire, William Barclay (1855–1927), music librarian and scholar". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36228. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Dent, E. J. (22 January 1927). "The Rewards of Scholarship [obituary]". The Times.
• King, A. H. (1952). "The Music Room of the British Museum, 1753–1953: its History and Organization". Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association. 79: 65–79. doi:10.1093/jrma/79.1.65.
• King, A. H. (1957). "William Barclay Squire, 1855–1927: Music Librarian". The Library. 5th ser. 12: 1–10. doi:10.1093/library/s5-XII.1.1.
• King, A. H (2001). "Squire, William Barclay". Grove Music Online (2nd ed.). doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.26480.

• Free scores by William Barclay Squire at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)