Notes for Notes.

Gottlieb, Jane

The Pierpont Morgan Library (J. Rigbie Turner, Mary Flagler Gary Curator of Music Manuscripts and Books) recently acquired two printed scores of music by Johann Sebastian Bach. While there can be no argument about the excellence of the music they hold, what the later score bears striking witness to is debated to this day.

In 1731, Bach published the Six Partitas for Harpsichord, BWV 825-830. They were published by Bach himself and bear the proud designation "Opus 1." (They were not, however, his first published work.) The copy of this 1731 edition acquired by the Morgan Library is sadly incomplete, containing all or parts of seventeen movements from five partitas (there is no music from Partita no. 1, BWV 825). Curiously, pages that are not part of complete movements have been carefully crossed out in black ink, but several pages containing complete movements have also been crossed out. The complete movements are: Partita no. 2, BWV 826, Allemande; Partita no. 3, BWV 827, Scherzo and Gigue; Partita no. 4, BWV 828, Menuet and Gigue; and Partita no. 6, BWV 830, Toccata, Allemanda, and Air. There is a good deal of extremely faint writing on the title page that can only partially be read, even under ultraviolet light; efforts continue to decipher this text, which may shed light on the provenance of the score and help explain its disfigured state. It was once in the celebrated collection of Werner Wolffheim that was auctioned in Berlin in 1928 and 1929.

It is well known that Glenn Gould left the concert stage in 1964 and spent much of the remainder of his short life in radio, television, and recording studios. He recorded Bach's Goldberg Variations twice, in 1955 and 1981. For the latter session (held in the same studio where Miles Davis recorded Kind of Blue in 1959), he recorded the complete work three or four times, and then recorded takes and retakes of individual passages. He returned to Canada and, in a copy of the C. F. Peters edition of the variations, indicated which takes or parts of takes were to make up the final recording. These instructions were then sent to Columbia in New York, where the recording was assembled from hundreds of snippets of tape. The Morgan Library has acquired Gould's copy of this score, which shows graphically what many have long alleged, namely that his recordings were a product as much of the editing room as the recording studio. Nearly every page is marked up, and some--notably in the sublime Variation 25--are now almost illegible owing to the thick overlay of Gould's black felt-tip instructions. Moreover, Gould's notes refer only to such editing: there is not one indication of, for example, tempo, phrasing, or dynamics, all of which were largely fixed in his head and fingers.

The chance to acquire both music by Bach published during his lifetime and a score annotated by one of his most renowned interpreters--documents separated by two and one-half centuries--may come along but once in a curator's lifetime; that these scores arrived at the Morgan Library within the space of a fortnight is remarkable indeed.

Near the end of June 2001, the Brandeis University Libraries (Darwin Scott, Creative Arts Librarian) acquired a copy of a rare theoretical work by the composer, organist, and monk Adriano Banchieri (1568-1634) for the Walter F. and Alice Gorham Collection of Early Music Imprints, 1501-1650, housed in the library's Department of Special Collections. Full descriptions of the holdings are at www.library.brandeis.edu/SpecialCollections/Collections/gorham.html (accessed 8 September 2001):

Adriano Banchieri. L'organo suonarino ... entro ii quale si pratica quanto occorrer suole a gli suonatori d'organo, per alternar corista a gli canti fermi in tutte le feste, & solennila dell'anno. ... Opera terza decima. In Venetia: appresso Ricciardo Amadino, 1605. RISM B/VI, p. 117.

Copies of the first edition of Banchieri's landmark treatise on playing from a figured bass and accompanying liturgical chant are extremely rare (subsequent editions were issued in 1611 [Amadino], 1622, 1627, and 1638 [all Venice: Alessandro Vincent]). Brandeis now holds the fifth recorded copy, and the only one located in North America. The 126-page book (numbered through p. 118) divides into five registri or chapters that provide instructions for the organist as well as written-out bass accompaniments for the Mass, vesper psalms, hymns, Magnificat, and Marian antiphons. The treatise also includes twenty sonatas (intonations) for the organist--notated in score format at the end of the first, second, and fourth registri--and written in a variety of contemporaneous instrumental styles (fuga, concerto, aria francese, ripieno, in dialogo, and capriccio).

The Library of Congress Music Division has acquired the Theodore Presser Archives. This is one of their most extensive collections, which documents many aspects of Presser's history as music publisher. Materials in this vast collection include: composers' correspondence, legal contracts, holograph music manuscripts, corrected proofs, original cover art, copyright data, bound runs of music publications, ledger books, sales and royalty documentation, and plate number logs. Included are archives of several companies acquired by the Theodore Presser Company, notably the publishing houses of John Church, Elkan-Vogel, and Oliver Ditson. The collection is a gift of the Theodore Presser Company.

Renowned jazz musician Dr. Billy Taylor donated his extensive collection of materials for inclusion in the Music Division of the Library of Congress. Consisting of original music manuscripts, printed music, correspondence, business papers, awards, photographs, news clippings, radio and television scripts, and sound recordings, the Billy Taylor Collection joins other archives at the library devoted to American jazz artists such as Pearl Bailey, Louis Bellson, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Charles Mingus, and Jerry Mulligan. The collection documents the versatile career of Dr. Taylor, pianist, composer, arranger, author, educator, and television personality, and is the largest in volume and broadest in scope of the Music Division's jazz collections. It will be a rich resource for researchers in the Performing Arts Reading Room, where it will be available once it is fully processed. A full and formal press release concerning the Billy Taylor Collection can be found at www.loc.gov/today/pr/2001/01-033.html (ac cessed 8 September 2001).

NOTES staff news. With this issue Eunice Schroeder leaves the Notes staff, having completed fourteen outstanding columns as book reviews editor. In all there were 542 reviews of 579 books representing thirteen countries. The titles Eunice selected for review over these years have included important new works in traditional areas of study as well as others on topics that perhaps served to broaden the perspective of our readers. The refined quality that has permeated her columns derives not only from the opinions and writings of the librarians and scholars she has thoughtfully commissioned, but also from her own graceful prose style and her careful editorial eye. The Notes staff will sorely miss her reasoned responses to every stylistic dilemma. It would be impossible to describe the endless hours Eunice has devoted to the production of each quarterly column that we all await so eagerly. We fully concur with former Notes editor Richard Griscom, who worked with Eunice for two years, when he said "Her knowledge o f the field was broad as well as deep, and her work was always on time. I always found working with her a pleasure." We wish her well in whatever new endeavors she chooses to undertake.

Music librarians lost a dear friend with the passing of Richard F. French on 18 May 2001. He was 85.

Born in Randolph, Massachusetts, on 23 June 1915, Mr. French attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, and went on to receive S.B. and A.M. degrees from Harvard University in 1937 and 1939, respectively. He taught at Harvard University (1947-51), Union Theological Seminary in New York (1963-74), Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale University (1973-85), and The Juilliard School (1987-99). From 1957 to 1961 he was vice president and director of publications for Associated Music Publishers, Inc., and from 1961 to 1981, he served as president of New York Pro Musica. He edited Music and Criticism: A Symposium (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948) and translated A Book about Stravinsky by Boris Asafyev (Russian Music Studies, no. 5 [Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982]).

At the time of his death, French was still teaching at Yale and advising doctoral students at Yale and at Juilliard. He had a vast knowledge of music and music literature, and over the course of his career he taught courses in such subjects as Renaissance and baroque church music, music of the eighteenth century, Haydn string quartets, Mozart operas, and the music of Liszt. In 1988, he established the Richard F. French Chair in Music Librarianship at Harvard University--the first music librarianship chair in the United States. His support of countless other institutions and individuals is unparalleled. He was extremely generous to MLA, most recently as a sponsor of the 2001 meeting in New York City. He received the MIA citation in 1999, in recognition of his support of music librarians and music librarianship.

Richard French truly understood and supported what we, as music librarians, do. He expressed this eloquently in his talk "Coda: Keeping the Faith," which is published in Music Librarianship in America: Papers of a Symposium Held 5-7 October 1989 Honoring the Establishment of the Richard F French Librarianship at Harvard University (ed. Michael Ochs, Harvard Library Bulletin, new ser., vol. 2, no. 1 [Cambridge: Harvard University Library, 1991]), as well as in Notes 46, no. 3 (March 1990): 846-48. It concludes:

We salute you, music librarians, provokers of our present, sustainers of our sense of wonder, custodians of our archives, of all those unanswered questions, that endless parade of imperfect and noisy interrogations that constitutes the substance, the story, and the glory of our culture. Few professionals can hope to champion so noble an enterprise.

We salute you, Mr. French, for honoring our profession with your friendship, grace, and wisdom.