Ellen Taaffe Zwilich held the first Carnegie Hall Composer’s Chair from 1995 to 1999. One of her many initiatives as chair was to build a video archive of interviews with composers whose works were premiered at Carnegie Hall and whose careers were influenced by that venerable cultural institution. These rich and often remarkably candid conversations feature composers Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter, David Diamond, Lukas Foss, Morton Gould, Ned Rorem, Gunther Schuller, and Zwilich herself, interviewed by Ara Guzelimian, discussing their musical experiences in New York and at Carnegie Hall. Through a cooperative agreement between the Library of Congress and Carnegie Hall, these videos are available here. The Library of Congress Music Division holds the papers of many of these composers.

Transcriptions of the eight interviews—each approximately three hours long—were done by students in Denise Von Glahn’s Spring 2008 Doctoral Musicology Seminar, “Musical Mediators”: Institutions in American Music History, at the Florida State University, College of Music. Zwilich is a graduate of the Florida State University School of Music and currently holds the Eppes Professorship in Music at the institution. The transcribers and the interviews they transcribed are: Matthew McAllister/Pierre Boulez, Amy Dunning/Elliott Carter, John Spilker/David Diamond, Paul Luongo/Lukas Foss, Lyndsey Thornton Woods/Morton Gould, Jason Hobratschk/Ned Rorem, Elisa Weber/Gunther Schuller, and Denise Von Glahn/Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. The transcriptions were edited by James Wolf.