Sonneck Society for American Music
Bulletin, Volume XXIV, no. 1 (Spring 1998)
Bulletin Board and Performances of Note
Center for Popular Music Acquires McCuen Collection
The Center for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University has acquired the personal collection
of sound recordings, books, photos, serials, business records, and personal papers of music-business
veteran Brad McCuen. In late July 1997, Center staff spent three days packing and moving more than
400 cartons of material from McCuen's home in Nashville to MTSU in Murfreesboro. Thorugh the course
of a career that spanned more than forty years, McCuen operated at the heart of the music industry.
He is perhaps best known for the many contributions he made during his twenty-two-year career with
RCA's Record Division, holding key positions with the company in sales, production, and music
publishing. Following his years with RCA, McCuen operated his own very successful independent record
label, Mega Records, and later served as Director of Country Music for SESAC.
Over the course of his lifetime of love for and involvement with music, McCuen accumulated an astounding
collection of commercial recordings, unissued live and studio recordings, books, photographs, serials,
business records, and personal papers. Recognizing the research value of this material, he wanted the
collection to remain intact, rather than be fragmented by collectors, and so offered it to the Center
for Popular Music at a cost considerably less than its market value in order that it be maintained
properly and made available for research.
The collection contains approximately 30,000 published and unpublished sound recordings, including
LPs, 78s, 45s, electrical transcriptions, and tapes. Since McCuen sat on the business side of the desk,
the collection also includes company ledgers, old trade publications, correspondence, meeting notes,
and various other papers that form a remarkable body of research material. The collection is strongest
in jazz, McCuen's first love, but is remarkable also for the breadth of genres represented. "Brad's
tasts were very catholic," said Center director Paul Wells, "and he knew good music whenever he heard
it, regardless of style." There is a strong representation of rhythm & blues, Broadway shows, movie
soundtracks, and an excellect selection of rock & roll. It will take years to sort through and file all
the material in the collection, Wells pointed out, adding that he plans to pursue some grant funding
in order to get some help with the process.
Universal Edition-Kurt Weill Archives
The Viennese music publisher, Universal Edition, A.G., in an effort to promote performance and scholarship
of music of the 20th century, has reached an agreement with the Eastman School of Music's Sibley Music
Library to establish the Universal Edition-Kurt Weill Archives, containing the original manuscripts
of all of Weill's works owned by the publisher. The collection includes the manuscripts to such
works as The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper), containing Weill's memorable "Mack the
Knife," along with The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt
Mahagonny). The archive has been placed on indefinite loan, enabling editors and scholars to complete
work on the Kurt Weill Edition, jointly published in the United States by The Kurt Weill Foundation for
Music and European American Mujsic Corporation.
"The Eastman School of Music, with its state-of-the-art Sibley Music Library, offers an extraordinarily
active environment for the promotion of Kurt Weill's music, both in terms of scholarship and performance,"
said Dr. Robert Thompson of Universal Edition. In fact Eastman has become a significant center for Weill
research. Three faculty members are editing volumes of the Kurt Weill Edition, several dissertations
have been completed or are underway by doctoral students, and the School has already mounted a number of
performances of Weill's stage works, acording to University of Rochester Professor of Musicology Kim
Kowalke, who is also a prominent Weill scholar, and President of The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music in
New York City. The Eastman School of planning a variety of events in November 1998 to celebrate the
loan of these manuscripts. For information, contact Allison Duffey, 716/274-1053.
ACLS Grants
The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) announced today that it will receive $10 million from three
major foundations to support the Council's mission to advance the study of the Humanities in the
United States and abroad. The Andrew W. Mellon and Ford Foundations have made endowment grants totaling
$9 million ($5 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and $4 million form the Ford Foundation) to
improve the Council's capacity to award individual peer-reviewed fellowshiops for scholars in the
Humanities. The Carnegie Corporation of New York will grant the ACLS $1 million over four years to plan
and to begin a new program of assistance to Humanities scholars and institutions abroad where fragile
institutions need sustained support, such as in the former Soviet Union and sub-Saharan Africa.
Web News
The Center for Popular Music is pleased to annoucned that their databases for sheet music, song books,
and trade catalogs are now web-searchable at popmusic.mtsu.edu. Louis Armstrong House and Archives
has launched a new web site: www.satchmo.net. Planned additions will
include all the finding aids for the archival collections! To assist current and prospective volume
editors, Music of the United States of America (MUSA), has set up a website at the University of
Michigan. Located at www.umich.edu/~musausa, this site
contains a description of this American music publishing project, its authors, advisors, and editors
as well as current news, lists of publications, and approved projects, proposed guidelines, and editors'
information. A "Suggestions" page allows visitors to nominate compositions for inclusion in the series.
Associate Director for ISAM
The Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College invites applications from musicologists, ethnomusicologists,
folklorists, and American studies scholars for a tenure-track appointment as Assistant/Associate
Professor for Fall of 1998. Teaching responsibilities include survey classes in American music, seminars
in vernacular and ethnic music cultures, an introduction to American Studies course, and the contemporary
American experience. Administrative duties include directing the American Studies Program and coordinating
special research projects and publications through the Institute for Studies in American Music at
Brooklyn College. Qualifications: A doctorate, minimum two years college teaching experience, a strong
publication record in American music, and administrative experience are required. Experience in fund
raising, program/research development, and editing are desirable. We welcome candidates with a
commitment to interdisciplinary studies, and with special interests in developing curricular and
research connections between American culture and American music. Please send current resume and
names and addresses of three references to: Dr. Joan V. Rome, Personnel and Labor Relations,
Brooklyn College, 2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11210. Submit applications by 31 March 1998.
Deadline may be extended.
Old Songs Listserve Created
A new listserv has been created to provide a forum for discussion of songs of the Tin Pan Alley era and
earlier, and also the media that presented them and, in their time, disseminated them: 78 rpm and cylinder
sound recordings, sheet music, songsters and song broadsides, manuscript song books, and so on. Some
songs may be too new for this list (e.g., those of the "Rock" era), but none are too old. If you would
like to subscribe, send e-mail to majordomo@brooklyn.cuny.edu with the message "subscribe oldsongs-l".
General Items of Interest
The NY Times (www.nytimes.com) listed the twenty-six inductees for
the American Classical Music Hall of fame in Cincinnati on 3 February 1998. They are:
Marian Anderson, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, Duke Ellington, George
Gershwin, Howard Hanson, Charles Ives, Scott Joplin, Serge Koussevitzky, John Knowles Paine, Leontyne
Price, Fritz Reiner, Arnold Schoenberg, Gunther Schuller, Robert Shaw, Roger Sessions, Nicolas Slonimsky,
John Philip Sousa, Isaac Stern, Leopold Stokowski, Igor Stravinsky, Theodore Thomas, Arturo Toscanini,
and the U.S. Marine Band.
University Music Editions announces the publication of the Performing Arts in Colonial American
Newspapers (PACAN) project in November 1997. This resource offers for the first time all references
to music, dance, theater, and poetry taken from news articles, notices, reports, advertisements, essays, and
lyrics found in 55,000 Colonial American newspapers and supplements published in 50 towns and cities.
For more information, call University Music Editions at 212-569-5340.
The National Endowment for the Humanities announces the 1 May 1998 postmark deadline for applications
for Fellowships for University Teachers, College Teachers, and Independent Scholars for advanced research in
the humanities. The tenure period is from six to twelve months and the maximum stipend is $30,000. For
application materials call 202-606-8466 (http://www.neh.gov).
Performances of Note
In the spirit of the Sonneck Society's American Music Week observance, the Lancaster chapter, American
Guild of Organists and Grace Lutheran Church, Lancaster, PA, co-sponsored a concert of American music
to ca. 1865 on Sunday afternnon 9 November 1997. The program included the music of James Hewitt, Lowell
Mason, William Billings, Justin Morgan, Benjamin Carr, and John Knowles Paine.
Under the direction of Maestro Ian Hobson, the Sinfonia da Camera at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) presented the premiere of a newly-restored concert version of John Philip Sousa's
most famous operetta, El Capitan, on Saturday, 27 September at the Krannert Center for the
Performing Arts. Lyric Theatre International dramatist Dr. WIlliam A. Martin, Jr. and musicologist Dr.
Jerrold Fisher, who recently completed the restoration, served as masters of ceremonies for the event
along with Phyllis Danner, archivist for the Sousa Archives for Band Research at UIUC.
During a pre-concert lecture, Danner provided an overview of the UIUC Sousa Collection and Martin and
Fisher discussed their work over the past 13 years toward restoration of El Capitan (1895), as
well as their reconstruction of Sousa's first operetta Desiree (1883), and of his Chris and the
Wonderful Lamp (1899). Although the libretto has been lost, Martin and Fisher reconstructed the story
line by consulting critical reviews of the day, stage directions, and other primary resources, including
those held by the Sousa Archives for Band Research at UIUC. A compact disc recording of the 27 September
performance will be available commercially in 1998. Fisher and Martin have recently released an AMDEC CD
of a performance of Desiree by the Pcono Pops Orchestra and Chorus. During the brief period
between 1896 and 1900, John Philip Sousa enjoyed a reputation as themost popular operetta composer when
four of his operettas, El Capitan (1895), The Bride-Elect (1897), The Charlatan
(1898), and Chris and the Wonderful Lamp (1899) were in production. Sousa, who served as
librettist for two of his 15 operetta, collaborated with the English-born dramatist Charles Klein for El
Capitan and The Charlatan. In addition to his work with Sousa, Klein had three Broadway hits
to his credit. Perhaps the two men would have continued their musical endeavors had Klein not lost
his life in the Lusitania tragedy.
Replete with memorable eguidilla, waltz, and march melodies, the minimally staged Sinfonia da Camera
production of El Capitan included an international cast of soloists led by baritone Douglas
Webster. Webster's tour-de-force performance of Don Medigua/El Capitan in the dual lead role drew
applause not only for his singing and acting, but for his timing, presence, and musicianshiop, as well as
clever and spontaneous asides in the manner of original leading man, DeWolf Hopper. Director
Nicholas Di Virgilio, conductor of the University of Illinois Choral Fred Stolzfus, production designer
Nicole Faurant, and director of Bands James Keene joined Maestro Ian Hobson and the Sinfonia d Camera in
the premiere performance. Clearly the most successful and most popular of Sousa's fifteen operettas,
El Capitan has it all -- love, hate, death, and intrigue. As fresh as they were a century
ago, the lively, spirited and poignant libretto and music have withstood the test of time. The newly
restored version by William Martin and Jerrold Fisher won a standing ovation from the captivated
and manifestly delighted audience.
--Phyllis Danner
Archivist, Sousa Archives
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Updated 04/21/98