The Rosaleen Moldenhauer Memorial: Music History from Primary Sources: A Guide to the Moldenhauer Archives. (Diverse Topics).

Gottlieb, Jane

The Rosaleen Moldenhauer Memorial: Music History from Primary Sources: A Guide to the Moldenhauer Archives. Edited by Jon Newsom and Alfred Mann. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2000. [733 p. ISBN 0-8444-0987-1.$85.]

The folded frontispiece of the Library of Congress's magnificent publication on the Hans Moldenhauer Archives reproduces a page from Beethoven's autograph copy of selections from Act 2 of Mozart's Don Giovanni. The caption states, "Georg Kinsky assumed that Beethoven made this copy for study purposes in preparation for composing ensemble sections in his opera Fidelio." Here is Beethoven looking back to Mozart for guidance--a fitting prelude to this lavish volume celebrating Hans Moldenhauer's archive of primary source materials--the resources from which music history is created.

Born in Mainz in 1906, pianist Hans Moldenhauer studied at the Musikhochschule in Mainz with Hans Rosbaud. He emigrated to the United States in 1938 and settled in Spokane, Washington, in 1939. An avid mountain-climber, he was drawn to the landscape of Washington, which reminded him of the mountainous terrain of his homeland. He established a piano teaching studio in Spokane, and founded the Spokane Conservatory in 1942. In 1943 he married pianist Rosaleen Jackman, who had been one of his students. Following a brief service in the U.S. Army, he resumed his formal musical studies and received a bachelor degree in music from Whitworth College in Spokane, and a doctorate degree from Chicago Musical College, where he studied with Rudolf Ganz. His doctoral dissertation, Duo-Pianism (Chicago: Chicago Musical College Press, 1951), remains an important reference source on the two-piano literature.

Moldenhauer began collecting musical documents in the 1940s, around the time he was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary disease that leads to blindness. His doctors' prediction that he would lose his sight within two years of the diagnosis fired his passion to collect. He was able to retain his eyesight for twenty more years, during which he amassed an extraordinary archive of musical documents from the Middle Ages through the twentieth century. He acquired Anton Webern's archives in the 1960s, and published a facsimile edition of the composer's sketches in 1968 (Anton von Webern: Sketches (1926-1945): Facsimile Reproductions from the Composer's Autograph Sketchbooks in the Moldenhauer Archives [New York: Carl Fischer, 1968]). His wife Rosaleen worked with him on their landmark study Anton von Webern: A Chronicle of His Life and Work (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1978).

Music History from Primary Sources documents items from the Moldenhauer Archives housed in nine institutions around the world: the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland; the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich; the Houghton Library of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois; the Stadtarchiv and Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna; the Zentralbibliothek of Zurich; Washington State University in Pullman; and Whitworth College in Spokane.

The Library of Congress received a significant component of Moldenhauer's archive (some thirty-five hundred items) as a bequest. Moldenhauer also provided the library with funds to support the publication of a book about his entire collection as a memorial to his wife Rosaleen, who died in 1982. After Moldenhauer's death in 1987, Jon Newsom and his staff at the library steered the book project to completion. Mary Moldenhauer, Hans's last wife, assisted them.

The volume consists of fifty-three essays on selected items in the Moldenhauer Archives, as well as a comprehensive inventory of holdings in the aforementioned institutions. Jon Newsom's elegant introduction outlines Moldenhauer's collecting philosophy. As Newsom explains, Moldenhauer was influenced by post-World War II developments in critical editing techniques and scholars' focus on close examination of primary source materials to create "authentic" or "definitive" musical texts. Indeed, the subtitle of this volume, "Music History from Primary Sources," was Moldenhauer's own motto for his collection. He had a keen interest in twentieth-century composers, both the masters of the second Viennese School (Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Webern) as well as some of his own contemporaries (Pierre Boulez, Witold Lutoslawski, Krzysztof Penderecki, George Rochberg, Gunther Schuller, and others) who were not yet well known at the time that he was collecting their scores. He also acquired a significant collection o f Gustav Mahler materials (now housed primarily in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek). Finally, Moldenhauer took a special interest in musicians like himself who were forced to flee fascist regimes, such as Karl Weigl and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

The four-part introductory essay titled "Music History from Primary Sources" by coeditor Alfred Mann (who was a close friend of Moldenhauer's) creatively narrates the development of music from medieval times to the twentieth century through references to some of the primary source materials found in Moldenhauer's archive.

The essays on particular items that comprise the bulk of the volume are a wonderful pairing of authors and subjects: Robert L. Marshall on Johann Sebastian Bach; Ferenc B6nis on Bela Bartok's Violin Concerto; Susan Clermont on Beethoven's sketch leaf from Piano Sonata op. 28, and puzzle canon "Das Schweigen," WoO 168; Patricia Hall on sketches from Alban Berg's Lulu; Michael Nott on Ernest Bloch's conducting score for Schelomo (one of Moldenhauer's last major acquisitions); Watkins Shaw on John Blow; and Jurgen Thym on Brahms, Anton Bruckner, and Paul Hindemith. (The Music Division of the Library of Congress now houses the world's largest collection of Brahms autographs in one place, as a result of the Moldenhauer bequest and other special collections.) Neal Zaslaw, Rena Mueller, John Daverio, and R. Larry Todd cover Mozart, Liszt, Schumann, and Mendelssohn sources, respectively, and Edward R. Reilly writes on sketches for Mahler's sixth and seventh symphonies. Don Gillespie writes on Frederick Delius, Linda Fairtile on Giacomo Puccini, and Philip Gossett on Gioachino Rossini's Moise. Other twentieth-century composers are covered by Laurajean Reinhardt (on John Cage, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Josef Hauer, and Webern); Robert Piencikowsky (on Boulez's Le marteau sans maitre); Claudio Spies (on Schoenberg and Stravinsky sources); and Felix Meyer (on Ives and Webern). Gunther Schuller discusses Edward Steuermann and his own Symphony for Brass in a fascinating interview with Jon Newsom, and George Rochberg and Aurelio de la Vega write about their own works. Each essay includes a color facsimile page from the source discussed. Although generally brief (ranging from two to fifteen pages), the essays demonstrate the type of work that can be done through study of primary source materials.

The inventory, which occupies the last third of the book (p. 483-728), is arranged alphabetically by name of musician, with works listed alphabetically by holding institution within each entry. Shelf numbers are provided only for the Library of Congress holdings. The individual entries are rather brief, and include title, date, and format of the source. Understandably, fuller descriptions of each source such as are found in the British Library's recently published The British Library Stefan Zweig Collection: Catalogue of the Music Manuscripts (London: British Library, 1999) would have required a separate publication. (More detailed descriptions of selected items from the Moldenhauer Archive may be found in the 1988 publication Quellen zur Musikgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts = Sources for 20th Century Music History [Munchen: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek; Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Library, Harvard University, 1988], which describes the joint exhibition, "Alban Berg and the Second Viennese School: Musicians in American Exile.")

The Library of Congress plans to develop a full-text electronic version of the volume (searchable by keyword) as part of its National Digital Library Program. Regrettably, the book does not include an index. The essays are rich in details about each source, and it would have been ideal for the reader to find all related references to names and selected subjects within the volume. But this is a minor quibble considering this remarkable achievement celebrating Moldenhauer's vision of "Music History through Primary Source Materials." All music libraries that hold or encourage study of primary source materials (which should be all of us) should find room on their shelves for this magnificent publication.