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Detail from autograph arrangement
of Duke Ellington's Jump for Joy. From the Georgetown University
Special Collections.
During the spring semester the library added to
its collections an important operatic manuscript by Gaetano Donizetti,
as well as manuscripts in the hand of César Franck and
Washington's own Duke Ellington. Doing so pointed up in memorable
fashion the great benefits that endowed funds bring us: the ability,
year after year, to add substantially to our holdings, and, as
in this case, to increase the solid core of original research
material that lends distinction to the library's enterprise.
The splendid gift that made these acquisitions possible came
in the form of a million dollars in appreciated stock, donated
by alumnus Leon Robbin, L'22, to ensure the continued growth and
health of his own large collection of musical manuscripts, already
promised to the Library. Since that gift in early 1997 the library
has been able to acquire a substantial number of items complementing
those collected so assiduously by Mr. Robbin: musical manuscripts,
letters by composers, and related writings by musicians about
their art.
Two acquisitions made possible by the Robbin endowment--the collection
of letters and photographs of Proust's musician friend Reynaldo
Hahn and the autograph lead sheets of American composer-songwriter
Lew Pollack--have been reported in previous issues of the Newsletter.
The following will give some idea of what it has been possible
to do over the past half-dozen years, remembering always that
not all kinds of things are always available, and that the intent
here is to list only the more important items in each category.
- In vocal music - In opera, the surviving sketches
and libretto for the unfinished opera Olga by Amilcare
Ponchielli; a good series of letters to Giacomo Puccini by one
of his first librettists; full score and piano/voice reduction
of an opera by the American composer Reginald Sweet; and the
Donizetti draft of an overture to his opera Fausta mentioned
above. In sacred music, liturgical settings by Sir John Stainer
and Sir Charles Villiers Stanford; an early hymn setting by
Sir Arthur Sullivan; Earl Robinson's "Ballad for Americans;"
and smaller pieces by Charles Gounod and César Franck.
And these are complemented by a number of secular concerted
pieces from the 1780s by Charles Wesley and John Worgan; folk-song
settings by Sir Ralph Vaughan Williams; and individual songs
by Cécile Chaminade and Ernest Chausson, among many others.
- In instrumental music - Orchestral acquisitions
include the first-draft manuscript of the "Brautlied,"
the slow movement of Karl Goldmark's Rustic Wedding Symphony;
a concert waltz sequence by Emil Waldteufel; what amounts to
the "lead sheet" for a symphony by the American Alan
Hovhaness; and a suite by British composer Eric Coates. Pieces
for solo keyboard include items by, among others, Carlos Chávez;
Franz Liszt; Ignaz Moscheles; and Hans von Bülow (based
on a rondo by C. P. E. Bach). And one cannot omit the sketch
for a piece for violin and piano in the hand of Frédéric
Chopin.
- In letters and essays by composers - Writings
about music include essays by Étienne-Nicolas Méhul;
Albert Roussel; and Camille Saint-Saëns. Good series of
letters by a number of composers were acquired including, besides
Reynaldo Hahn mentioned above, Benjamin Britten; Sir Arnold
Bax; Gustave Charpentier; Cécile Chaminade; the American
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor; Jules Massenet; Darius Milhaud; Ignaz
Moscheles; Henri Vieuxtemps; and Sir Ralph Vaughan Williams.
What can an endowment do? In half a dozen years it can create
a collection that demands scholarly and intellectual respect;
after that, it's there to create another one. After that, another.
Endowments do a library good!
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