Departments
|
by Victoria Moon
Imagine a time when artists like Jan Paderewski, Enrico Caruso, Jenny Lind, and Sergei Rachmaninoff could be heard for a dollar-two dollars and fifty cents for orchestra seats. A time when the grandes dames of society built ornate music rooms in their homes, governed by rules such as "the powdering of noses is strictly prohibited." When music scores were carefully copied by hand from the composer's pencilled notes, and serious music students studied in Europe, hearing the great masters perform live in the concert halls there.
A time such as this is long past, it seems, until one steps into the archives of musician and music historian Robert French '50MU. French, president and director of the Louisville Academy of Music, has devoted much of his life-and storage space-to housing a musical archive that attracts both local and national historians to its rich resources. The collection, which French acquired through many sources, including donations from musicians and their families, contains more than 14,000 recordings and 8,000 books as well as hundreds of musical programs, news clippings, letters, scrapbooks, journals, and scores. The archives fill every nook and cranny of the Academy and spill into neatly labeled files kept in row upon row of filing cabinets, a firsthand account of music as it grew and flourished in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.His collection includes extensive biographical and pictorial archives of musicians and composers known to most serious music scholars. For instance, French has acquired a collection of material on jazz vocalist Helen Humes, who was born in Louisville.
Humes replaced Billie Holiday in Count Basie's orchestra in 1938 and received worldwide acclaim in the 1960s for her solo jazz recordings. Another renowned musician noted in French's archives is American composer Roy Harris. French served as Harris' assistant and copyist from 1951 to 1953, and has amassed a collection of personal letters, handwritten scores, news clippings, and photographs documenting Harris' life. The collection draws the composer's biographers from across the country.
The archives also contain the record of lesser-known musicians who played an instrumental part in the development of music in Louisville and, ultimately, in the development of the University of Louisville's School of Music. One of those musicians was Louisville piano student Hattie Bishop. As a young woman, Bishop traveled to Berlin, Germany to further her studies with Karl Klindworth, then conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. "In the 1880s, Berlin was a cultural center. All of the major artists performed there and many of them lived there," French says. Since music was considered a "frivolous" pursuit in the U.S. at the time, there was a dearth of professional music teachers and serious music students often went to Europe to further their studies. From the time of her arrival until her departure in the spring of 1887, Bishop kept a detailed account of every musical performance she attended as well as narrative accounts of her studies and the musicians surrounding her. "It's a gold mine historically," says French. "There are perhaps few programs from that period-since Berlin was bombed almost into extinction during World War II-so there may not be a record of many of these performances, making this journal one of a kind."
French also has extensive biographical information on Bishop, from her marriage to James Breckenridge Speed, for whom the Speed Scientific School and the Speed Art Museum were named, to the music room she offered to U of L for use as its temporary music department in 1936, to the original sheet music of the memorial song composed at her death in 1942.
Other items of note include a copy of Impressions of Caruso and His Art, a memoir of the performances of operatic sensation Enrico Caruso signed by the singer, original programs announcing dramatic performances by actresses Helen Hayes and Mary Pickford, an autographed, handwritten score of an early version of Roy Harris' Symphony No. 7, and comprehensive files on the lives and works of former U of L music professors Moritz von Bomhard and Corneille Overstreet.
The value of French's archives has not gone unnoticed by U of L. Librarians at the School of Music's library often steer graduate students and researchers to this vast resource. As for French, he is glad to show off his piece of musical history to others. "Serious researchers are always welcome," he says, knowing that his more than 20 years of collecting provides a unique historical treasure, and the assurance that the songs of the past can still be heard by the musical scholars of today.
