MSS 125 - The Philip M. Neufeld Collection of Music and Lyric Manuscripts; 0.5'
Philip M. Neufeld (1905-1990) was a Wall Street executive. Though he was not a Yale alumnus, he served on the board of the Yale Library Associates for 31 years. The collection contains texts or music of many familiar hymns and sacred songs, as well as correspondence and clippings. Albert Hay Malotte and Fanny Crosby are among the musicians represented in the collection. (Not yet processed)
Misc. Ms. 300 - New Haven Concert Programs; 0.25'
This collection consists of 24 programs of concerts held in New Haven from 1824 to 1859. Included are performances by such well-known musicians as the Hutchinson Family Singers, the soprano Jenny Lind, and the violinist Ole Bull.
MSS 4 - The New Haven Music Club Papers; .5'
Three manuscript record books of the Club's activities from 1921 to 1946. The approximately twenty-five members of the Club, mostly local women, were all performers and held monthly recitals.
Misc. Ms. 365 - Music, Vocal and Instrumental, Associated with New Haven; 1'
This collection consists primarily of musical scores associated with New Haven, Connecticut in various ways; for example, some have lyrics that mention New Haven or Yale, others were written by New Haven composers, and still others were published in New Haven. The collection also includes 111 concert programs (dating from 1860 to 1970), a 1941 newspaper article about the history of music in New Haven, and a list of New Haven references in Musical Review.
MSS 5 - The New Haven Oratorio Society Papers; 5'
Created in 1903 by Horatio Parker, the Society was formed to promote musical culture, especially choral music, in New Haven and Connecticut. Included for the Society's ten-year existence are the records of the Secretary and Treasurer.
MSS 74 - The New York Brass Quintet Papers; ca.15'
The New York Brass Quintet was the prime mover in gaining acceptance of this medium for concert performances. Various composers wrote music expressly for the Quintet. The collection includes a library of 440 works for various combinations of brass instruments. Also present are programs, reviews, and numerous tapes of performances. (Partially processed)
MSS 126 - The Christine Nilsson Collection; 0.5'
The Swedish soprano Christine Nilsson (1843-1921) ranked among the foremost opera singers of the second half of the nineteenth century. She performer widely throughout Europe, and also in the United States. The collection includes sheet music, portraits, articles, and other materials pertaining to Nilsson. (Not yet processed)
MSS 48 - The Red Norvo Papers; 18'
The Papers of the percussionist Red Norvo (1908-1999) consist chiefly of arrangements for his big band in the 1930s. Most of the three hundred arrangements are by Eddie Sauter, who was Norvo's staff arranger at the time and played trumpet in the band. Some programs, reviews, letters, and photographs make up the remainder of the Papers. Norvo's wife, Mildred Bailey (1907-1951), is represented among the material. (Partially processed)
See also The Eddie Sauter Papers
See Dance, Stanley and Helen Oakley
Misc. Ms. 246 - The Eva Judd O'Meara Papers; 1'
This collection documents the activities of Yale's first Music Librarian, Eva Judd O'Meara (1884–1979). O'Meara was a founding member of the Music Library Association, as well as the first editor of Notes, the MLA's journal. The collection includes correspondence, minutes of meetings of the Music Library Association and the Yale University Library, O'Meara's writings and notes from her course on music bibliography, scrapbooks, awards, and photographs. (Unprocessed)
MSS 77 - The David and Fanny Opochinsky Collection of Music Manuscripts; 3.5'
This collection contains about 300 musical manuscripts, letters, and other documents written by prominent musicians. Born in the Polish city of Lódz in 1900, David Opochinsky was trained as a violinist at the Moscow Conservatory, but later became successful in the business world; his company, Titra-Film, provides subtitles and dubbing for the movie industry. Opochinsky came to the United States in 1942 and began collecting rare music documents in 1950. He died in 1974, and in 1986 his heirs generously donated his collection to Yale University. It includes compositions, letters, and autographs by C.P.E. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Paganini, Weber, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Dvorák, Grieg, Paderewski, Scriabin, Rachmaninoff, Kreisler, Casals, Bartók, Stokowski, Stravinsky, Berg, Prokofiev, Copland, Rodgers, Serkin, and other eminent composers and performers. Opochinsky and his wife Fanny had each item framed along with a picture of the musician; their New York apartment was described as a musical museum. After the collection came to Yale, the contents were removed from the frames and transferred to archival folders and boxes, to insure their preservation for future researchers. (Partially processed)
MSS 10 - The Leo Ornstein Papers; 12'
Leo Ornstein, born in Russia in 1892 or 93, was active as a composer until shortly before his death 2002. The Papers include all known existing holographs of his long career as a composer (about 175 titles in a variety of instrumental and vocal forms), photographs, programs, correspondence, and reviews. After a highly active career as a composer related to the Futurist School and as a brilliant piano soloist, he retired from concert life and founded with his wife the Ornstein School of Music in Philadelphia. Vivian Perlis, in her research of 20th-century American music, brought Ornstein and his music back to the mainstream of concert life. The Music Library also has several sealed boxes of sketches that are not to be opened in Ornstein's lifetime. See also the Poon Hill Press website for Ornstein's music available on the web, and the Vivian Perlis Collection of Schmitz, Ornstein, Copland, and Kirkpatrick.
MSS 104 - Richard C. Burns Archive of Overtone Records, Inc.
MSS 98 - The Claude V. Palisca Papers; 17'
Claude V. Palisca (1921-2001) was one of the leading musicologists of the 20th century. He taught at Yale from 1959 to 1990. He is best known for his research on the history of music theory and aesthetics, especially in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, and for his widely-used textbooks Baroque Music and A History of Western Music. (The latter work was originally by Donald J. Grout; Palisca was responsible for the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th editions.) His papers include writings, correspondence, and other materials. (Partially processed)
See also: Records of the Yale Seminar on Music Education and the Papers of the Yale Music Curriculum Project
See Andrés Segovia, Correspondence with Sophocles Papas
MSS 32 - The Horatio Parker Papers; 33'
Parker (1863-1919) was the first Dean of Yale's School of Music, serving from 1904 until his death. The bulk of the Papers were a gift of his widow in 1923. Parker's output as a composer is essentially complete in the Papers, which include holographs as well as manuscripts in other hands and published works. The remainder of the papers contain correspondence, programs, clippings, writings by Parker, and biographical information.
See also: The Yale School of Music Papers
MSS 102 - Collection on Adelina Patti; 3'
This collection documents the career of Adelina Patti, and many of the items in the collection are housed in a large scrapbook. Also included in the collection is a biography of Patti: Adelina Patti: Her Loves and Letters, by her goddaughter, Gladys Adelina Lewis. The collection also includes an autograph book presented to Selma Gruenberg, which includes an Adelina Patti autograph and inscription (1882), and correspondences from Patti to Giulia Valde and various other people. Objects in the collection include a slipper autographed by Patti, a pair of opera glasses, a pair of formal evening gloves, and an ornate collapsible fan.
MSS 96 - The Vivian Perlis Collection of Schmitz, Ornstein, Copland, and Kirkpatrick; 0.5'
This collection contains correspondence, an unpublished book, clippings, and other materials pertaining to E. Robert Schmitz (1889-1949) and the Pro Musica Society, Leo Ornstein (1893?-2002), Aaron Copland (1900-1990), and John Kirkpatrick (1905-1991). It was acquired from Vivian Perlis, who is a prominent historian of American music and the founding director of the Oral History, American Music project at Yale University.
MSS 45 - The Dragan Plamenac Papers; ca.6'
The entire library of the Yugoslavian musicologist Dragan Plamenac (1895-1983) was acquired by the Music Library. It consisted of about 5,000 volumes: 3,500 monographs, 700 volumes of practical music, 600 reels of microfilm and 500 rare books. These have been incorporated into the Music Library's collections. Plamenac's own papers consist of correspondence, research notes, and classroom lectures and notes. (Not yet processed)
MSS 52 - The Frederick and Rose Plaut Papers; 28'
This collection consists of 35,688 photographs of recording artists, actors, writers, and statesmen taken by Fred Plaut (1907-1985) while he was a Recording Engineer for Columbia Records from the mid-1940s through the 1970s. Most of the negatives have contact sheets, and there are 3,591 enlargements. Each shot is listed with a unique number in the finding aid. An additional 23,256 negatives (most with contact sheets), 2218 enlargements, and several hundred slides taken during travels, are not catalogued. There is also correspondence to Fred and Rose Plaut (d. Feb. 1, 1992), a singer, from Francis Poulenc, Virgil Thomson, Ned Rorem, Aaron Copland, et al., and publications that have reproductions of Plaut photographs. Recording artists (musical and spoken) frequently requested Fred Plaut to do their recording. He would bring his camera to a recording session and request permission to shoot a role of film. All in all 657 persons have been identified, many in significant numbers (e.g., Leonard Bernstein 1,170 photographs, Robert Casadesus 437, Glenn Gould 393, Eugene Ormandy 387, Rudolf Serkin 1,283, and Igor Stravinsky 1,343).
MSS 82 - The Cole Porter Collection; 54'
Cole Porter (1891-1964) bequeathed his papers to his alma mater: several hundred manuscripts and copies of published and unpublished songs, both in his handwriting and in that of his long-time copyist, scrapbooks devoted to his Broadway shows; photographs of his shows, trips, friends, and homes; travel journals, musical notebooks, librettos of shows, and his extensive collection of recordings (included in the Historical Sound Recordings Collection) and they have been supplemented by materials discovered by Robert E. Kimball in Porter's publisher's warehouse,. Earlier the composer had donated a large collection of his published music. The Cole Porter Musical and Literary Property Trusts have contributed photocopies of manuscripts held elsewhere, and Porter's friends and classmates have provided lyrics and recordings of unpublished songs from his days at Yale. Several groups of papers and letters have been received, as well as a group of college course notebooks found in the home of one of his classmates.
See also: The William McBrien Papers; and the Cole Porter Collection at the Library of Congress.
MSS 15 - The Quincy Porter Papers; 43'
Quincy Porter (1897-1966) was involved with the American Composers Alliance, the National Institute of Arts & Letters, the American Music Center, and the Yaddo festivals in addition to his professorships at the Cleveland Institute, Vassar College, the New England Conservatory, and Yale University (1946-66). He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for musical composition in 1954. In addition to his musical works, the Papers include an extensive correspondence, programs, scrapbooks, classroom papers, published articles, photographs, and music of other composers.
MSS 138 - Portrait File; ca. 10'
Photographs, illustrations, and other images of musicians, instruments, and other topics pertaining to music.
MSS 90 - The Sam Pottle Papers; 5.5'
Sam Pottle (1934-1978) graduated from Yale College in 1953, and received the M.M. from the Yale School of Music in 1959. He was active as a composer and conductor, chiefly in television and musical theatre. He is best known for his work as a composer and music director for the children's television show Sesame Street.
See Paul Dukas: Correspondence with Paul Poujaud
MSS 70 - The Mel Powell Papers; 14'
Mel Powell (1923-1998) had remarkable careers in both jazz and classical music, the latter highlighted by a Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for Duplicates, his concerto for two pianos and orchestra. His papers consist chiefly of music manuscripts, correspondence, and photographs. As a young man, Powell served a short but legendary stint as a pianist for Benny Goodman's band, and 42 of his arrangements are in the Benny Goodman Papers.
MSS 103 - Collection on Prominent Figures in Historical Recorded Sound
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