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As the oldest institution of higher education in Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania, founded in 1751, has been the frequent choice of local musical organizations and musicians as a home for letters, scores, photographs, sound recordings, and other materials that document their contribution to Philadelphia's rich musical heritage.  This article describes some of the more significant collections housed at the Penn Library that offer researchers invaluable sources for studying the musical life of the city.

Early Philadelphia Music Making

Public subscription concerts were presented in Philadelphia as early as 1757, organized chiefly by Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791) -- statesman, judge, inventor, and composer--who claimed the distinction of being "the first native of the United States who has produced a musical composition."  The Hopkinson Collection includes manuscripts of works by Hopkinson as well as copies he made for his own library of music by his contemporaries.  These manuscript volumes are supplemented by thirteen volumes of printed music that represent an extraordinary compilation of eighteenth-century American and European music.

Musical Fund Society

In 1820, a group of professional and amateur musicians formed the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia, the oldest American music benevolent society still existing to the present day.  The society sponsored an extraordinary amount of musical activity throughout the first half of the nineteenth century.  Vocal and instrumental departments were created and headed by the "Directors of the Music"; regular "practises" were scheduled on Thursdays during all but the summer months; and concerts were presented on a regular basis by society members, frequently with the assistance of guest soloists. These performances were often elaborate affairs requiring large forces of instrumentalists and singers, and the choice of repertory remained faithful to the Society's goal to "promote a sound and critical musical taste in the community."

To support this musical activity, the Society devoted significant funding to the establishment of a music performance library, made up of both printed music and manuscript copies of music that was unavailable for purchase.  When only a score was available, orchestral parts were hand-copied, and on other occasions a score would be made from purchased printed parts. The Society also made copies of performance materials borrowed from such organizations as the Handel and Haydn Society of New York and the Moravian Brethren in Bethlehem. The result is a collection rich in first and early published editions of music as well as in contemporaneous manuscript copies.

The records and music library of the society were maintained in the society's offices in Musical Fund Hall (806 Locust Street) until the sale of the hall in 1924. At that point, several arrangements were made for the preservation of these historic documents until they ultimately were donated by the society to the Penn Library in 1991. The music scores, parts, and sheet music are now housed in Annenberg Rare Book & Manuscript Library, and many have been individually cataloged.

The Musical Fund Society collection also includes correspondence, minute books, engagement books, and other archival materials.  Because of the complicated history of subsequent transfers through the years, only a portion of the correspondence remains in the collection at the University of Pennsylvania. Most of it dates from 1946 to 1980, and comprises routine correspondence relating to membership matters, concerts, grants, and the business of the officers of the society. The series of minutes is fairly complete from 1820 through the mid-1950s. Engagement books for the Musical Fund Hall cover the period from 1883 to 1918, and they reveal interesting details about the social life of the city, since this was a period when the hall was used far more frequently for balls, union meetings, political meetings, religious services, vaudeville acts, and sporting events than for music concerts.

Dr. Edward Iungerich Keffer (1861-1933), a Philadelphia dentist and amateur musician, assembled a large collection of nineteenth-century sheet music and bequethed it to the society upon his death.  The Keffer Collection of Sheet Music includes over 2,000 editions published from 1790 through 1895.  Of these, over half were published in Philadelphia.  Full-color scanned images of some of the music treating topics related to Philadelphia may be viewed at http://www.library.upenn.edu/collections/rbm/keffer/philmus.html.

In an effort to encourage the composition of new chamber music, the society sponsored an international chamber-music composition competition in the mid-1920s. Among the over six hundred submissions was the Third String Quartet by Bela Bartok, who ended up sharing the first prize with Italian composer Alfredo Casella. The original performance materials of Bartok's quartet were held by the society until 1991, when Gretel Ormandy, Eugene Ormandy's widow, acquired them for the Penn Library's Eugene Ormandy Collection. The gift included an autograph score of the quartet, a second manuscript score, partially in the hand of the composer, and a set of manuscript parts, with Bartok's autograph corrections.

Stokowski and Ormandy

Since its founding in 1900, the Philadelphia Orchestra as been at the center of the musical life of the city, and the papers of Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy, the conductors responsibile for building and sustaining the reputation of the orchestra over the course of seven decades, are preserved in the Penn Library.

Stokowski was also a prolific arranger, and his orchestral arrangements and transcriptions form the core of the Stokowski Collection at Penn.  Although he was most famous for his transcriptions of organ music by J.S. Bach--such as the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor featured in Walt Disney's "Fantasia"--only thirty-six of the over two hundred arrangements that survive are of music by Bach.  Some of the other composers receiving Stokowski's distinctive treatment are Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Brahms, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner.

The Eugene Ormandy Collection encompasses a broad range of materials, including correspondence, marked scores, photographs, and broadcast recordings.  Ormandy's daily routine included writing both personal and professional correspondence, and these letters make up the largest part of the collection. There are also letters written on Ormandy's behalf by his secretaries and by orchestra management and replies received from Ormandy's correspondents. Some notable correspondents of the 1930s and 1940s include Ormandy's mentor, Jenö Hubay; Leopold Stokowski, whose letters offer insight into his working relationship with Ormandy; Stokowski's wife, Olga Samaroff Stokowski, who championed the appointment of Ormandy as Stokowski's successor; Alma Mahler-Werfel, with whom Ormandy consulted regarding Mahler's work; Albert Einstein, who asked Ormandy to help violinist Boris Schwarz obtain his entry visa to the United States; composers such as Sergei Prokofiev, Percy Grainger, Sergei Rachmaninoff; and soloists such as Fritz Kreisler, Lotte Lehmann, and Lauritz Melchior.  Personal correspondence with family members shows that Ormandy was deeply involved with his family and was willing to help them, particularly when they were pursuing careers in music.

Ormandy's official correspondence related to the Philadelphia Orchestra often reflects the shifting nature of the relationship between management and players, particularly letters dating from the 1960s, when the discontent of the players led twice to strikes. The collection also contains correspondence with instrumentalists (or often their agents and mentors) who hoped to join the orchestra and with young soloists who wrote seeking advice.  In addition, Ormandy corresponded with established solo artists, choir directors, and other conductors whom he sought to engage for performances.

Ormandy often commissioned works from composers, and there is correspondence concerning these commissions as well as two specific commissioning projects. The earlier project was funded by Reverend Theodore Pitcairn of Philadelphia and resulted in commissions awarded to one composer each year for five years, starting in 1960. The other was a commissioning project that was planned for the 1976 Bicentennial year and funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Ormandy Collection includes an oral history collection consisting of the transcripts of ninety-three interviews conducted between 1969 and 1996.  Four of the interviews were with Ormandy, and the rest were with conductors, soloists, composers, Philadelphia Orchestra members and administrative staff, other professional colleagues, family, and friends.  The original tape recordings are also a part of the collection.

The Stokowski and Ormandy collections include over 2,000 scores and and sets of parts marked by the conductors for rehearsals and performances with the Philadelphia orchestra.  Stokowski treated his scores as scrapbooks and often pasted in postcards, photos, related texts, and letters.

Marian Anderson

The University of Pennsylvania is the principal repository for documents concerning the life and career of singer Marian Anderson. Her music library and personal memorabilia are now housed just a short distance from the neighborhood where she grew up.  The papers comprise 495 boxes and include correspondence, business records and contracts, biographical materials, notes, journals, calendars, and financial documents. Programs and publicity materials documenting her singing career are extensive, as is the collection of awards and honorary degrees she received.

The Marian Anderson Collection also includes her entire music library and her collections of sound recordings and photographs, all of which have been separately cataloged.  The music library contains more than 2,000 songs in manuscript--including many by Florence Price--as well as more than 2,000 printed scores.  Interviews with Howard Taubman and with Studs Terkel and lectures featuring Miss Anderson on audio tape have also been preserved and cataloged.  Among the most interesting recordings are those made of rehearsals in her home studio and the test pressings of her commercial recordings. The thousands of photographs in the collection are preserved in albums and scanned on the website of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library (http://www.library.upenn.edu/special/photos/anderson).

Rudolf Serkin

One of the most recent additions to the music-related collections at Penn are the papers of pianist Rudolf Serkin (1903-1991), which include correspondence, reviews, and clippings related to his performing career as well as his teaching and administrative work at the Curtis Institute of Music and the Marlboro Festival.  Among the correspondents are cellist Pablo Casals, violist Alexander Schneider, violinist Adolf Busch, artistic manager Arthur Judson, recording executive Goddard Lieberson, and his son Peter.  The Serkin Collection is not yet cataloged and processed, so a detailed listing of the holdings is not available.

Working with Materials at Penn

Because of their age and condition, most of the materials described in this article are held in the Walter H. & Leonore Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library, located on the sixth floor of the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library.  The entrance to the building faces Locust Walk between 34th and 36th Streets. The Rare Book & Manuscript Library is open Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 4:45 pm, and Saturday from noon to 4:00 pm during the fall and spring academic semesters. The library is open to all who need to consult its collections. Readers must provide current photographic identification for admission to both Van Pelt-Dietrich Library and this department.  Please call 215/898-7088 for more information.  To view selected items from the Penn Library's music special collections, browse the "virtual exhibitions" at http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/music.

--Richard Griscom, head, Otto E. Albrecht Music Library, University of   Pennsylvania

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Do you feel the fickle finger of fate tapping your shoulder to host an Atlantic Chapter meeting? Fall 2004 was my turn. There had never been a Music Library Association chapter meeting in West Virginia, and President Carl Rahkonen set out to remedy this. Actually, Carl didn't have to do much arm-twisting, and I had good support from the West Virginia University Libraries administration. A detailed guide from Amanda Maple and many helpful hints from Mary Prendergast made the planning manageable.

Hosting a chapter meeting involves all the things you naturally expect – arranging meeting rooms and equipment, providing information on local events, restaurants and hotels. It also involves responsibilities you might not expect. Some of the local arrangements tasks that weren't initially on my radar were key participation in program selection, webpage design, registration, reception food and entertainment. The program selection, reception food and entertainment areas are opportunities to showcase the best of your local offerings. The Friday reception and entertainment have traditionally been sponsored by the hosting library, so if this kind of expense requires approval from your library administration, the smooth thing is to include these estimates in your initial proposal to host the meeting (she says with 20/20 hindsight).

Registration also involves small expenses for name tags and folders. The ideal arrangement is to have another MLA member or two in the area help with registration, both ahead of time and on the meeting day. But lacking fellow MLAers, any generous colleague is a great help.

So, what was special at the WVU meeting of the Atlantic Chapter? Most people don't expect to find a world-class steel drum program in Morgantown, West Virginia, so the Friday reception showcased a small, semi-pro group under the direction of graduate student Shawn Roberts. Chair-elect Steve Landstreet took the opportunity to focus on West Virginia music in three of the four programs, recruiting local experts – Dr. Christopher Wilkinson, WVU Professor of Music History, and Dr. John Cuthbert, Curator of the WVU Libraries' West Virginia and Regional History Collection. Dovetailing nicely with these local presenters was ATMLA's own Carl Rahkonen, and his personal tour of West Virginia traditional music venues. And to give us all something concrete and immediately useful to take home, ATMLA's Anne Harlowe discussed Temple University Libraries' work in developing guides for evaluating scholarly credentials, applied to the performing arts.

Hosting an Atlantic Chapter meeting allows you to showcase the treasures of your institution – the people, the facilities, the geography, the programs. It's also an opportunity to participate in every facet of conference preparation, on a small, friendly scale.

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Yale Fineman (1951—2004) passed away December 2, his fifty-third birthday, following a courageous battle with lung cancer. He was appointed Music Librarian and Head of Reference and Circulation in the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library at the University of Maryland in August 2002, and had been Acting Head of that Library since July 2004.

After earning a Master of Arts in Musicology from Tufts University (1994) and Master of Library Science from the University of Pittsburgh (1995), Yale started his library career in Pittsburgh. He worked first briefly at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and then, from 1996 to 1998, in the Music and Art Department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. He left to assume the post of User Services Librarian in the Duke University Music Library in 1998.

Yale is known widely among his colleagues in the Music Library Association as the creator of DW3 Classical Music Resources, while he was at Duke University. He wrote about that project in the Music Library Association Notes (March 2002) under the title “The Economics of Information: DW3 and the Case for Creating a Music Megasite.” Professionally active and articulate through publications and presentations on various aspects of digital information dissemination and bibliography, Yale’s most recent article on “Electronic Theses and Dissertations in Music” appeared in the June 2004 issue of Notes.

Those who knew Yale well knew him also as a brilliant classical guitarist with an abiding love for Spanish music, which he had studied, practiced, and performed for thirty-five years. He was a noted expert on the music of Isaac Albeniz. His repertoire spanned five centuries of western music, ranging from Renaissance polyphony to jazz-influenced, Latin-American tunes. Upon learning of Yale’s cancer diagnosis earlier in 2004, friends and colleagues in MLA’s Southeast and Atlantic Chapters paid tribute to him by commissioning John Mayrose, a Duke friend and colleague and recent recipient of ASCAP's Morton Gould Young Composer Award, to compose a composition for classical guitar in his honor. They presented "Cascada" to Yale in June 2004.

Yale will be remembered by his colleagues as a vivid presence, dedicated in equal measure to librarianship, service, scholarship, and musicianship—and as a loyal friend who touched numerous lives across the country. He is survived by his wife Carol, two brothers, and his mother. Notes of condolence and remembrance can be sent to the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library, in care of Debra Reed, 2511 Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland, College Park MD 20742. Contributions to the Yale Fineman Memorial Fund, made out to the University of Maryland College Park Foundation (memo: Yale Fineman Memorial Fund) can be mailed to the Performing Arts Library address above.

--Bruce Wilson, Retired Head of the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library, University of Maryland, College Park

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Several new members have joined the Atlantic Chapter of MLA this past year. In what we hope to be a continuing feature of this blog, we are including short biographical sketches of our newcomers (in one case, a true Newcomer) so that members might better get to know them. We hope that they will join us in Vancouver and at future chapter meetings. Read on to learn who has joined our ranks and please help make them feel welcome!

Joe Clark is the Digital and Audiovisual Media Librarian at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His duties include management of the Library Media Department and Slide Library and liaison duties for the Music, Theater, Dance, and Visual Arts Departments. Before entering music librarianship, he worked throughout the Western U.S. as a professional guitarist and educator. Joe holds an M.A. in Ethnomusicology from Arizona State University, an M.A. in Library Science from the University of Arizona, and a B.A. in music from the University of Utah.

Linda Dempf is the Music & Media Librarian at The College of New Jersey. She recently earned an MLS from Indiana University, where she gained experience in their Music Library, Main Library and Lilly Library (Rare Books and Manuscripts). Prior to entering the library field, she was a professional musician, and earned a BM from Mannes College of Music, an MM from St. Louis Conservatory, and a DM from Indiana University. Her studies included concentrations in horn, music history, and women's studies. This blend of interests is reflected in her doctoral thesis, "All-Women Orchestras in the United States and the Story of the Woman's Symphony Orchestra of Chicago." An avid natural horn player, she has performed with Apollo’s Fire, the Connecticut Early Music Festival, Aradia Baroque Orchestra, Opera Lafayette, Chicago Opera Theatre, and Early Music New York.

Richard Griscom moved east from the University of Illinois in May 2004 to become head of the Atto E. Albrecht Music Library at the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in Wilmington, Delaware, with his wife, a physician practicing in Maryland and Delaware. Dick joined MLA in 1981, and his move east marks his first foray outside the Midwest Chapter. His MLA activities include terms as member-at-large of the board of directors (1989-91), executive secretary (1992-96), and editor of NOTES (1997-2000).

Terra Mobley is Music Librarian at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA. She earned an M.L.I.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Terra has a B.S. in Music Education (Vocal) from Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, NY. Terra spent a short time teaching elementary general music and substitute teaching in New York State. When her family moved to Wisconsin, she began working at Waupaca Public Library as Interlibrary Loan and Audio-Visual Librarian. Her duties there included interlibrary loan, reference desk, collection development, and some web maintenance.

Nara Newcomer is a Visiting Assistant Librarian (Cataloger) at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, WV, where her duties include supervising cataloging operations and working with the music collection.  This spring, she is also serving as an adjunct instructor for the Shepherd Department of Music and Theater, teaching a course in Music History.  Nara earned her M.L.S. and an M.A. in Music History from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where she was a graduate assistant in the Music Library.  Her M.A. thesis was titled "The American Organ Reform, 1945-1960."  In addition to library work, Nara is an organist and church musician.

Carlos Peña has been the technical services assistant at the University of Pittsburgh's Theodore M. Finney Music Library since November 2003. He is currently enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences and expects to graduate with the MLIS degree in August 2005. Carlos began his library career as a page and clerk at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh in 1995. He became an assistant at the Music and Art Department in 2000 where his primary duties included reference work and collection development of the jazz and popular recordings collections. He continues at the Music and Art Department on a part-time basis.

Having earned a B.A. in anthropology from Pitt, Carlos also spent 10 years studying classical and jazz piano. He earned a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts as a guitarist in 1992 and currently plays the vibraphone in Pitt's jazz ensemble. He continues to work as a freelance instrumentalist in the Pittsburgh area. This year Carlos is attending his first MLA conference in Vancouver as a recipient of the Association's Kevin Freeman Travel Grant.

Tim Sestrick is Music Librarian at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He has an M.L.S from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he was a graduate assistant in the Music Library; an M.A. in Percussion Performance from Indiana University of Pennsylvania; and undergraduate degrees in Music Performance and Liberal Arts. He has performed at the Aspen Music Festival, with the Rochester Oratorio Society and Rochester Bach Festival, and with the Johnstown and Altoona Symphony Orchestras.

Mary Wedgewood is a newly arrived senior music cataloger at the Library of Congress. Prior to arriving in Washington, she worked for OCLC Canada in Winnipeg, Manitoba as a contract (read "outsourcing") music cataloger for major Canadian universities.  In addition, she has worked in academic and public libraries (reference and cataloging) in several Canadian and U.S. institutions and has taught music history, music literature, and keyboard instrument performance.  Earlier in her career, she worked for Otto Harrassowitz in Wiesbaden, Germany for 2 years.

Mary studied at Macalaster College in Jacksonville, IL (mathematics), the University of Arkansas (organ performance), the University of Chicago (library science), and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (music history).

She currently serves as choir director/organist at 15th Street Presbyterian Church in Washington DC. She lives in Washington with her husband Richard, recently retired from the University of Manitoba. They have 2 children, students at Purdue University in Indiana and at Coe College in Iowa.

Steve York is the Cataloging Librarian at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, VA. A native of Nebraska, Steve earned a Bachelor of Music Education degree in 1987 from the University of Nebraska- Lincoln. Over the next 9 years, he was an announcer and the Music Director for Nebraska Public Radio, a 9-station network offering classical music and NPR news and public affairs programming.

In 1996, he moved with his wife Annette to the DC metro area where he worked in a large music retail store and performed with several area professional choirs including the Washington Bach Consort and the Palestrina Choir. This led to performance opportunities in some of DC’s great venues including the Kennedy Center, the National Cathedral, St. Matthews Cathedral, the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception at Catholic University, the German Embassy, and the White House.

In 2001, he and Annette (and their 17 year old cat, Pamina) moved to Bloomington, IN so Steve could pursue his MLS at Indiana University, where he had the opportunity to work and intern in the IU Music Library.

Posted by at 11:43 AM | Permalink

Welcome to the Newsletter of ATMLA. It's been awhile since we've produced one of these things, though it wasn't for lack of good intentions. For the first few years of our chapter's nascent existence (we formed from a merger of the Pennsylvania and Chesapeake chapters in 2000), Kile Smith, curator of the Fleisher Collection at the Free Library of Philadelphia, did a masterful job of producing a yearly compendium of our news. But we've had a hard time getting it back off the ground since Kile finished his tenure.

So last fall I suggested to our incoming president Steve Landstreet that we might want to turn the newsletter into a weblog or 'blog'. And like any good leader Steve knew to assign the work to the unfortunate soul who thought up the bright idea in the first place. So here we are several months later. I am now the blog editor and communications committee chair, and the ATMLA Newsletter/Blog is finally a reality.

But why a blog instead of a newsletter? And what's the difference, anyhow? Experts disagree on the definition of a 'blog', but in its simplest form, a blog is a collection of successive entries presented on the web and produced by special software that makes editing and updating a snap. Some blogs are highly personal, allow comments, or trace the connections between a network of otherwise random bloggers. Ours will be centered on the distribution of news from our members and their libraries, will be quickly and easily updated as our news hits the stacks, and will—in most ways—look a lot like a "traditional" online newsletter.

There will be several ways that you the reader can access our blog. First off, one may always visit the chapter website and click on the link for the blog. For those who are a bit tech-savvy, you may subscribe to the blog in a newsreader or aggregator such as Bloglines. And hopefully coming soon, there will be the option to subscribe to periodic e-mail updates.

Stay tuned. And blog on.

--John Anderies, Music Librarian, Haverford College

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