How Copland Came to Georgetown

No musical manuscript in the hand of Aaron Copland is recorded as appearing at auction since 1939. Copland, certainly the best-known, if not the best, American composer of the 20th century, donated all of his papers to the Library of Congress. It was with some excitement, then, that we realized that the manuscript entitled "Queenie's Song" in the Katherine Garrison Chapin Biddle Papers was not, as first suspected, a reproduction, but was instead the original manuscript itself, written out by Copland and signed by both Copland and the work's librettist, Edwin Denby.

Aline Fruhauf (1907-1978), Aaron's Rod, woodcut, 1962, 10" x 3 1/2". Gift of Roderick S. Quiroz.

"Queenie's Song" is the best-known section of The Second Hurricane, an opera Copland composed for high school students, on commission from the Henry Street Settlement House. Little known today, the work was performed repeatedly soon after its creation. In 1938 Copland provided the four-page fair copy of the song, signed by both Denby and himself, to a charity auction in New York. There it was purchased for an unknown amount by Mrs. Biddle and mailed to her in an envelope inscribed in Copland's hand. Ultimately the manuscript came to Georgetown with Mrs. Biddle's papers, the gift of her son, the late Edmund Randolph Biddle, and his wife Frances.

The Copland manuscript was supplemented most recently by the gift by Roderick S. Quiroz of the surviving original drawings by Prentiss Taylor for the costumes for Grohg (1927), a ballet which was never performed, but whose music provides the basis for Copland's later Dance Symphony.

"Queenie's Song" will be on exhibit beginning in May in the Leon Robbin Gallery on the 5th floor of Lauinger Library.