List of Selected Special Collections

The following one hundred Special Collections are drawn from the more than five hundred designated Special Collections in the Music Division. The entries are designed to reveal the most significant materials in each collection.

Amateur Hour Collection.
Applications of performers appearing on Major Bowes' Amateur Hour (on radio, 1935-1944) and Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour (on radio and television, 1948-1968), with accompanying documentation.

American Harp Society Repository.
Manuscript and printed music, photographs, programs, correspondence, periodicals, and scrapbooks documenting the careers of prominent twentieth-century harpists.

George Antheil Collection.
Music manuscripts of the self-styled "Bad Boy of Music," a leading American avant-garde composer of the 1920s and 1930s; Antheil's correspondence with Stanley Hart and Mary Curtis Bok.

Arsis Press Archives.
Music manuscripts, proof copies, and other publishing materials for works published by Arsis Press, devoted to works by women composers; business records dating from its founding in 1974.

Ernst Bacon Collection.
Autograph music manuscripts and photocopies of Bacon's orchestral, chamber, and larger choral works; literary materials, notebooks, professional and personal correspondence.

Samuel Barber Collection.
Autograph music manuscripts and libretto materials; includes extensive holdings for Antony and Cleopatra, written for the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House in New York in 1966.

Charlie Barnet Collection.
Manuscript jazz orchestrations from the band library of the American saxophonist and leader of a dance band particularly noted for its jazz playing during the 1930s and 1940s.

Béla Bartók--Marya Freund Correspondence.
Correspondence between Bartók and Marya Freund, a German soprano noted for her performances of modern music.

John Davis Batchelder Collection.
Autograph manuscripts and iconography relating chiefly to nineteenth-century composers and opera singers; includes a lock of Beethoven's hair and a letter written by George Sand about Frédéric Chopin.

Harold Bauer Collection.
Personal papers, music manuscripts, and photographs of the British-American pianist and writer, for a time president of the Friends of Music in the Library of Congress.

Irving Berlin Collection.
Personal papers and scrapbooks of Irving Berlin; the archives of the Irving Berlin Music Corp.; includes manuscripts for such classics as "God Bless America" and "White Christmas."

Leonard Bernstein Collection.
Music manuscripts, personal papers, and 114 scrapbooks documenting Bernstein's career; includes correspondence with Helen Coates, his first piano teacher, and autograph manuscripts for West Side Story.

Ernest Bloch Collection.
Music manuscripts, correspondence, lecture notes, and business records of the Swiss-born composer, conductor, and teacher who first attracted international attention by winning the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge prize for his Suite for Viola and Piano in 1919.

Franziska Boas Collection.
Personal and professional papers documenting the career of the American choreographer and teacher, artistic director of the Franziska Boas Dance Company, and a pioneer in the field of dance accompaniment.

William Batchelder Bradbury Collection.
A musical autograph album (ca. 1850) assembled during his period of study in Europe, containing inscriptions by many prominent musical figures; a letterpress book and other items.

Budapest String Quartet Collection.
Manuscript and printed scores and parts, programs, photographs, and other materials relating to the members of the internationally renowned quartet, in residence at the Library of Congress, 1940-1962.

James Madison Carpenter Collection.
Transcriptions of British and American folk music and folk plays; music manuscripts, song texts, pictorial materials, field notes and related items.

John Alden Carpenter Collection.
Manuscript and printed music, correspondence, scrapbooks, clippings, and drawings and photographs of sets and costume designs for works of this twentieth-century jazz-influenced composer.

Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation Collection.
The archives of the Coolidge Foundation including autograph manuscripts of nearly one hundred commissioned works; personal papers, manuscripts of Mrs. Coolidge's compositions and works dedicated to her, photographs, and other items.

Aaron Copland Collection.
Music manuscripts representing almost every work by Copland; his voluminous correspondence, business records, photographs, subject files, and other materials.

Sidney Robertson Cowell Collection.
Correspondence, photographs, and field notes of this pioneering ethnomusicologist, the wife of composer Henry Cowell.

Damrosch Family Collection.
Personal papers, music materials, correspondence, and scrapbooks documenting the lives of several generations of this American dynasty of musicians.

Diaghilev/Lifar Collection.
Printed and manuscript music from the library of the Russian impresario, later belonging to Sergei Lifar, a principal dancer with the Ballets Russes; correspondence and a notebook kept by Diaghilev during his last years.

Vernon Duke Collection.
Music manuscripts, personal papers, and scrapbooks documenting the work of the Russian emigré who composed art music under his Russian name, Vladimir Dukelsky, and popular music as the American, Vernon Duke.

Carl Engel Collection.
Correspondence and business papers of the musicologist and writer; includes papers from his positions as Chief of the Music Division (1922-1934) and president of music publishing company G. Schirmer, Inc.

Geraldine Farrar Collection.
Personal papers, scrapbooks, and memorabilia of one of the leading American opera singers of the first decades of the twentieth century, representing her stage, screen, and public service careers.

Irving Fine Collection.
Music materials representing virtually every composition of the American composer and teacher; personal papers, scrapbooks, and ephemera.

Bob Fosse/Gwen Verdon Collection.
Personal papers, photographs, and other materials meticulously documenting the careers of dancer/choreographer Fosse and dancer/singer Verdon.

George and Ira Gershwin Collection.
Music materials, correspondence, photographs, scrapbooks, and other items relating to composer George Gershwin and lyricist Ira Gershwin; includes autograph manuscripts of all of the major Gershwin scores and a self-portrait oil painting of each brother.

Alma Gluck Collection.
Scrapbooks documenting the career of this Rumanian-born American soprano; music materials, photographs, correspondence, and ephemera.

Leopold Godowsky Collection.
Music manuscripts and personal papers of the Polish-born pianist, including his piano transcriptions of legendary difficulty; business and financial papers, photographs, and printed music.

Julius Gold Collection.
Professional and personal papers of the musicologist, theoretician, and teacher, comprising pedagogical materials and extensive correspondence with his students.

Ferde Grofé Collection
Manuscript and printed music for Grofé’s own compositions as well as his arrangements of other composers' works; includes scores for his Grand Canyon Suite and his orchestration of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

Glenn Dillard Gunn Collection.
Correspondence, photographs, clippings, printed music, and other materials deriving from the career of the pianist and music critic, active in Chicago, 1910-1936, and in Washington, 1940-1954.

Oscar Hammerstein II Collection.
Scripts, librettos, correspondence, scrapbooks, music materials, and related items; includes scripts and lyrics for some of the most popular musicals of the twentieth century.

Jascha Heifetz Collection.
Manuscript and printed music comprising the performing library of the Russian-born violinist; scrapbooks, photographs, and extensive files of concert repertoire lists and programs.

Heineman Foundation Collection in honor of Edward N. Waters.
Autograph music manuscripts and correspondence and rare imprints; includes a copy of the first printed libretto of Handel's Messiah and a copy of Tinctoris's Terminorum Musicae Diffinitorium, the first printed dictionary of musical terms (ca. 1495).

Victor Herbert Collection.
Music scores and orchestral parts, librettos, scrapbooks, programs, and photographs of the Irish-born, German-educated American cellist, conductor, and composer.

Irene Heskes Collection.
Sheet music of Yiddish popular songs spanning the years 1895-1950, much of it from the archives of the Hebrew Publishing Company.

George Hodges Collection.
The music libraries of Hodges's father and grandfather, comprising eighteenth- and nineteenth-century manuscript and printed music, instructional materials, pamphlets, and other materials, mostly of English origin.

Carrie Jacobs-Bond Collection.
Music manuscripts, personal papers, photographs, and business records of the printing house which she established for her own works.

Charles Jahant Collection.
Nearly two thousand photographs of opera singers, dating from the late nineteenth century to the present; many are inscribed to Mr. Jahant.

Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine Kaye Collection.
A comprehensive archive of the compositions of Sylvia Fine Kaye, many of them written for Danny Kaye's film and stage appearances; scripts, music, and business records relating to his television shows.

Jerome Kern Collection.
Music materials dating from the beginning of his career through the 1930s; orchestrations for many important works including comprehensive holdings for Show Boat.

Hans Kindler Foundation Collection.
Music materials and business records of the Kindler Foundation which chronicle its concert and commissioning activities; Kindler's personal papers and manuscript and printed scores.

Otto Klemperer Collection.
Music materials, correspondence, photographs, and books from his personal library; research materials relating to Peter Heyworth's biography of Klemperer.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold Collection.
Autograph manuscript scores for most of the works of the Austrian-born composer of concert music and film scores; correspondence and ephemera.

Andre Kostelanetz Collection.
Manuscript orchestrations used by the Russian-born conductor; personal papers, correspondence, and books from his personal library; American music materials purchased through his bequest.

Koussevitzky Archives.
Music materials and personal papers of the Russian conductor; the archives of the Koussevitzky Foundation, documenting a fifty-year commissioning program; includes manuscripts of more than 250 commissioned works.

Fritz Kreisler Collection.
Manuscript scores for works by Kreisler as well as his arrangements of works by other composers; correspondence, photographs, biographical materials; his Guarneri del Gesù — violin and the autograph manuscript of Brahms's Violin Concerto in D major.

Harry and Sarah Lepman Collection.
American patriotic sheet music from the 1890s though World War II, many items having highly decorative covers.

Charles Martin Tornov Loeffler Collection.
Correspondence, music manuscripts, photographs, programs, and clippings spanning the entire career of this Alsatian-born composer and violinist.

Paul Löwenberg Collection
More than 1,600 first edition piano scores of Viennese dance music, including nearly all the works by composers of the Lanner and Strauss families, the nineteenth-century "waltz kings" of Vienna.

Edward and Marian MacDowell Collection.
Music materials and personal papers of Edward MacDowell; materials pertaining to his wife, Marian MacDowell, and to the MacDowell Colony, which she established in New Hampshire.

John Herbert McDowell Collection.
Manuscript and printed music, photographs, programs, and personal papers documenting the career of the American composer who wrote chiefly for the theater and dance.

McKim Fund Collection.
Personal papers of Leonora Jackson McKim, one of the first women to achieve international recognition as a concert violinist; the archives of the McKim Fund, established to support music for violin and piano; includes manuscripts of nearly forty commissioned works.

Loretta C. Manggrum Collection.
Music scores, programs, and other materials of the African-American composer, teacher, and church musician.

Mason/McConathy Collection.
Nineteenth-century European school music books, collected by Lowell Mason and later organized by his student, Osborne McConathy.

Nikolai Karlovich Medtner Collection.
Manuscript and printed music, professional and family correspondence, books, and a plaster cast of the hands of the Russian pianist and composer.

Dayton C. Miller Collection.
More than 1,600 flutes and related instruments, music, iconography, memorabilia, and Dr. Miller's 3,000-volume library containing virtually every publication on the flute and flute playing issued up to 1940.

Charles Mingus Collection.
Autograph manuscripts of composer, bassist, and bandleader Mingus; photographs, literary manuscripts, correspondence, and tape recordings of interviews, broadcasts, recording sessions, and Mingus composing at the piano.

Modern Music Archives.
Business records of Modern Music, a journal that championed the cause of contemporary music (1924-1946); correspondence, typescripts of articles, and photographs.

Moldenhauer Archives at the Library of Congress.
Autograph music manuscripts, correspondence, literary documents, and other primary source materials spanning the entire history of Western music, from Gregorian chant to the twentieth century.

Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton Collection.
Manuscript and printed copyright deposit scores, chiefly from the 1920s and 1930s.

National Negro Opera Company Collection.
Photographs, clippings, correspondence, and other materials documenting performers and performances of the Washington-based company, active from the late 1930s until the early 1960s.

Newland/Zeuner Collection.
The music libraries of Philadelphia musicians William Newland and Charles Zeuner, comprising manuscript and printed music of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: sacred choral music, songs, and chamber and orchestral music.

Rachmanioff Archives.
Autograph music manuscripts, personal papers, correspondence, and memorabilia documenting the career of the composer, pianist, and conductor, chiefly after his emigration from Russia in 1917.

Roger Reynolds Collection.
Music and literary manuscripts, sketches, and magnetic tapes of computer, audio and video files documenting the multimedia work of this pioneering American composer, author and teacher comprise the core of this growing collection.

Mrs. Giles F. Rich Collection.
Scrapbooks containing programs, photographs, ticket stubs, and other memorabilia documenting musical, theatrical, and athletic events in and around Boston, 1882-1953.

Richard Rodgers Collection.
Autograph music manuscripts for many of Rodgers's best known works written with lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II; includes Babes in Arms, South Pacific, and Oklahoma!

Sigmund Romberg Collection.
Manuscript and printed music, librettos, film scripts, and photographs of Romberg, one of the most prolific writers of popular music of the twentieth century; includes The New Moon and The Student Prince.

Rosenthal Collection.
Autograph music and literary manuscripts collected by Harry Rosenthal; includes rich holdings of autograph music manuscripts and correspondence of Franz Liszt.

Artur Rubinstein Collection.
Correspondence, photographs, concert and repertoire documents, business records, and related materials, largely after 1940.

Francis Maria Scala Collection.
Manuscript and printed band music, chiefly composed or arranged by Scala, the first Leader of the Marine Band, 1855-1871; includes an autograph note to Scala from Abraham Lincoln.

Albert Schatz Collection.
More than twelve thousand printed opera librettos dating from 1601 through the nineteenth century; research materials compiled by Schatz.

Arthur P. Schmidt Company Archives.
The archives of the Boston music publisher, which handled virtually all significant American composers from the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries; autograph music manuscripts, printed music, and business records.

Artur Schnabel Collection.
Autograph music manuscripts of the Austrian-born pianist, composer, and teacher; materials for his edition of Beethoven sonatas.

Arnold Schoenberg, 1936 (George and Ira Gershwin Collection) (Photograph by Edward Weston) (Copyright 1981, Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents)

Arnold Schoenberg Collection.
Correspondence to Schoenberg as well as carbon copies of letters from Schoenberg; extensive exchanges with his two most famous pupils, Alban Berg and Anton von Webern.

William Howard Schuman Collection.
Autograph manuscripts for chamber, symphonic, and operatic works; libretto material; includes The Mighty Casey.

Irving SchwerkéCollection.
Correspondence, autograph albums, photograph albums, and scrapbooks, spanning the entire career of this American writer on music.

Charles and Ruth Crawford Seeger Collection.
Music manuscripts, printed materials, correspondence, and other papers deriving from the work of musicologist/ethnomusicologist Charles Seeger and his wife, composer Ruth Crawford Seeger.

Gisela Selden-Goth Collection.
Autograph music manuscripts of eminent eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century European composers, collected by the Hungarian musicologist and composer.

Roger Sessions Collection.
Autograph music manuscripts and personal and professional papers; includes literary materials for his opera, Montezuma.

Elie Siegmeister Collection.
Manuscript and printed music materials, libretti, educational materials, clippings, and correspondence.

Beverly Sills Collection.
Forty-one scrapbooks documenting the career and contributions of one of twentieth-century America's most important singers and a leader in music administration.

Nicolas Slonimsky Collection.
Papers of the musical lexicographer, conductor, and composer best known for his exhaustive work on editions of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians; manuscripts of more than twenty compositions by Slonimsky; printed materials from his library.

Oscar George Theodore Sonneck Collection.
Papers of the first Chief of the Music Division, 1902-1917, including research notes, publication materials, and correspondence; the major portion of the collection comprises his correspondence as founding editor of the Musical Quarterly.

John Philip Sousa Collection.
Autograph music manuscripts for most of the works of the American composer and conductor; includes "The Stars and Stripes Forever," officially designated as the national march of the United States.

Hans Spialek Collection.
Manuscript and printed scoresand parts for works composed or orchestrated by Spialek; diaries, correspondence, ephemera, and photographs; music materials belonging to Spialek and to his wife, singer Dora Boshoer.

Harold and Rose Marie Spivacke Collection.
Personal, professional, and student papers of Harold Spivacke, Chief of the Music Division, 1937-1972; rarities purchased with funds bequeathed by Mrs. Spivacke, including autograph correspondence of Alban Berg.

Edward and Clara Steuermann Collection.
Manuscript and printed music, correspondence, and other materials relating to pianist and composer Edward Steuermann; papers of his wife, music librarian Clara Steuermann.

Stravinsky/Craft Collection.
Publishers' proofs and photocopies of works by Stravinsky, many with extensive autograph corrections and annotations, given to the Library by Stravinsky's protégé, conductor and writer Robert Craft.

William Remsen Strickland Collection.
Printed music, photographs, scrapbooks, correspondence, promotional materials, and ephemera of the conductor noted for his performances of American music.

Henryk Szeryng Collection.
Personal papers, manuscript and printed music, photographs, scrapbooks; includes Szeryng's reconstruction of Paganini's Third Violin Concerto.

Tams-Witmark Rental Score Collection.
The music firm's rental score collection of nearly seven thousand manuscript and printed scores for operas and operettas dating from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries.

Vladimir Ussachevsky Collection.
Personal papers, educational materials, and music manuscripts of this innovator in the field of electronic music and one of the founders of the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center.

Harry Von Tilzer Collection.
Music manuscripts, lyric sheets, scripts, and business records of the Harry Von Tilzer Music Co., one of the most successful American popular-music publishers of the early twentieth century; includes extensive autograph materials of Von Tilzer.

Samuel Prowse Warren Collection.
Programs from performances given chiefly in churches in the New York City area, ca. 1880-1910; important turn-of-the-century programs from major New York concert halls.

Edward N. and Lilly L. Waters Collection.
Autograph letters and first editions of the music of Franz Liszt from the estate of Edward Waters, Chief of the Music Division, 1972-1976; his research notes relating to Victor Herbert; correspondence.

Hugo Weisgall Collection.
Music and literary manuscripts of the composer and theorist; includes personal correspondence during World War II.

Gertrude Clarke Whittall Collection.
The quintet of Stradivari instruments given by Mrs. Whittall; autograph manuscripts of prominent European composers; includes notable manuscripts of Brahms, and documentary holdings of Paganini and Mendelssohn; the archives of the Whittall Foundation.

Performing Arts Reading Room

Library of Congress Home Page