Acquisition Highlights for 2024 – a Top 5 List
This is a guest post from Head of Acquisitions & Processing Vin Novara, with Senior Music Specialists Mark Eden Horowitz and Ray White.
With the previous fiscal year behind us and a new year underway, it is time to share the Music Division’s Top 5 Acquisitions for 2024! As in years past, it was not easy to select only five acquisitions to highlight. And as tempting as it is to include an “honorable mentions” list at the end of this post, that would quickly grow to over 50 entries. So now, on to the list …
Burt Bacharach (1928-2023) was one of the defining musical voices of the 1960s through the 1980s and whose work remains remarkably current and contemporary today. The Library has already deemed Bacharach and his work as national treasures; he received the 2012 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song along with his collaborating lyricist, Hal David. Bacharach was a composer, songwriter, record producer, and pianist, as well as an arranger and orchestrator—a rare combination among pop songwriters. His sound was unique for popular music at that time, not only in its harmonic and rhythmic inventiveness and daring, but in Bacharach’s instrumental choices. The collection contains many of his compositions as well as photographs, correspondence, clippings, awards, and sound recordings. The materials are currently being prepared by archivists for discovery and access and will be available to researchers early in 2025.
2. “Wizard of Oz” manuscripts in the hands of Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg
There is arguably no more famous or iconic film musical than “The Wizard of Oz.” With its annual showings on television of what the Library describes as “the most seen film in movie history,” nearly every adult and child know the movie and the much-loved songs. Long assumed lost, these unique manuscripts are both cultural and historic artifacts, effectively demonstrating songwriter Arlen’s creative process. An addition to the Music Division’s growing collection of Harold Arlen’s papers, these items consist of manuscript music scores and sketches, lyric sheets and lyric sketches, and other related documents. These manuscripts are now available in the Performing Arts Reading Room upon request.
3. Records of the Kronos Quartet and the Kronos Performing Arts Association
The Kronos Quartet has an unparalleled level of impact and name-recognition in western art music. Over the past 50 years, this string quartet has commissioned more than 1,000 works; released more than 60 recordings; toured internationally dozens of times; altered the expectations of concert presentation; made chamber music accessible to all audiences; won too many of the highest honors to list here; and collaborated with a diverse range of other artists—and they did this all while remaining dedicated to their vision and ethos. Throughout those years they evolved into the thriving performing arts organization, the Kronos Performing Arts Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. This first installment of their materials consists of 310 linear feet of business records dating from 1979 through 2017 and documenting the activities of this innovative ensemble and the association supporting their efforts. The remainder of the collection—including manuscripts for their commissioned works, audio and video recordings, programs, and a few samples of auxiliary instruments and stage attire—will arrive in 2025. The collection will become available to researchers in mid-2025.
Anthony Braxton (born 1945) is a highly notable composer, multi-instrumentalist (predominantly saxophones), educator, and theorist. He is recognized in the worlds of jazz and experimental music for the revolutionary nature of his works. Bolstering his legacy are the mentorships he provides to generations of rising musicians, especially in instructional positions at Mills College and Wesleyan University, but also through his ensembles. Braxton has created a unique musical system that is visual in nature and reflects his theories on music and art. Per the website of the Tricentric Foundation (TCF), which Braxton founded in 1994 and for which he serves as Artistic Director, his work “examines core principles of improvisation, structural navigation, and ritual engagement—innovation, spirituality, and intellectual investigation.” The collection includes approximately 1,400 music items (mostly manuscripts), 2,950 textual documents (notes, writings, etc.), and 1,720 audio and moving image recordings, spanning the years 1968 through 2020. This collection is currently being prepared by archivists for discovery and access and will be available to researchers in spring 2025. Be sure to join us for an Anthony Braxton concert at the Library on March 8, 2025!
5. Two Franz Liszt song manuscripts: “Ich Möchte Hingehn,” S.296, and “Oh! Quand Je Dors,” S281/1
These two music manuscripts were described to us as a single manuscript of four pages. They are similar in size, appearance, and age. But senior music specialists on our staff determined that they are in fact portions of two separate manuscripts—for two of Liszt’s well-known songs from the early/mid-1840s. In each instance, the manuscript presents an intermediate stage of the compositional process, with an early version of each song, and changes notated on the manuscript. That for “Ich Möchte Hingehn” (words by Georg Herwegh, 1817-1875) shows work on the first version of the song across two pages. The manuscript for “Oh! Quand Je Dors” (words by Victor Hugo, 1802-1885) presents the final verse of the song, also across two pages. These items will be cataloged soon.
We hope the above materials will spark your curiosity and entice you to visit the Performing Arts Reading Room. They join the vast and diverse collections of the Music Division that span more than 1,000 years of Western music history and practice, offering many exciting opportunities to create new research and to inspire new performances.
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