Archives and Music Documentation Centres BranchAuthor(s): John ShepardSource: Fontes Artis Musicae, Vol. 55, No. 4 (October-December 2008), pp. 597-599Published by: International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres(IAML)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23512582 .

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REPORTS

Archives and Music Documentation Centres Branch

The Archives and Music Documentation

Centres Branch held two sessions during the

IAML conference in Naples. On 22 July 2008, the session on pedagogical initiatives related to

performing arts archives was entitled Teaching

Archives. Inger Enquist from the Music Library of Sweden delivered a paper on "Jenny Lind in the Archive: A Project in Archive Pedagogy." Enquist described a project to enlighten 12

year-old school children in Sweden about the

nature of research and the value of archives in

writing history. Music archivists joined forces with school teachers, musicologists, and other

scholars to create two suitcases reminiscent of

the trunk used (and made famous) by the leg

endary Swedish soprano Jenny Lind. The suit cases were filled with facsimiles of primary

sources for information about Jenny Lind's life

and career. The reproduced sources were a bal

ance of "beautiful things" and "interesting things," organized in files by topical categories (e.g., "Family and Friends," "On Stage," "Traveling," etc.). For example, a letter from

the 14-year-old Jenny Lind to her mother was

selected because it expresses a homesickness

with which young students could sympathize:

"I want to leave the theater because I don't like

it. Don't worry, nothing bad has happened ...

[and later in the same letter:] You know,

mother, we should buy cows this summer, and

pigs, and ducks " Other examples of sources

reproduced were a nineteenth-century painting

of the interior of the Royal Opera House in

Stockholm, an illustration of people waiting in a

queue to purchase tickets to a Jenny Lind con

cert, a pink silk band with gold and lace (ap parently used to tie a bouquet of flowers), and a

passage from the 1845-47 diary of Louise

Johansen (Jenny Lind's maid who grew up with

her). The suitcases also include a lesson guide for the teacher, a list of the facsimile docu

ments, a short biography of Jenny Lind, a list of

questions for the students, compact discs,

sheet music for class singing, a sample of lace

seen in Jenny Lind's portrait on the Swedish 50

kronor note, and a list of possible class projects

on larger issues suggested by the Jenny Lind sources (e.g., daily life in Sweden in the mid nineteenth century, the appearance of newspa

pers in those times, social welfare in nine

teenth-century Sweden). Schools are given a

recipe for Jenny Lind Pudding to be offered in their cafeterias, and students are also assigned

relevant short stories by H.C. Andersen to read

("The Nightingale" and "The Ugly Duckling"). Two additional files are devoted to special ef fects in mid-nineteenth-century theaters and

women's fashion in Sweden at that time. The

Jenny Lind suitcases were produced at a cost of

2000 Euros, are lent out to public schools in the same manner as orchestra parts sets, and are

out in circulation for 75% of the year.

John Shepard of Rutgers University read his

paper "PRESERVE: Teaching Dance Com

panies about Archives," concerning the travel

ing workshops Leslie Hansen Kopp and

Michael Scherker presented in 1989-90 to dance companies in twenty U.S. cities. In 1987, Kopp and Scherker (both now deceased)

founded PRESERVE, the Coalition for Per

forming Arts Archives. To obtain "some mea

sure of the dance community," they designed a

questionnaire about archival issues which was

distributed in March 1988 to the 73 member

companies of the organization Dance/USA

Collation of the information in the 52 completed questionnaires (a 72% response) enabled Kopp

and Scherker to demonstrate to the Andrew

Mellon Foundation "an obvious and urgent

need to disseminate information about archival

management to performing arts companies."

For 1989-90, the Mellon Foundation funded

Preserve's touring workshops, which gave an

overview of archival materials owned by dance

companies, provided outlines for preparing col

lection descriptions (finding aids), enumerated basic practices for insuring long-term preserva

tion of archival materials, exhibited copies of re liable archival publications, and recommended sources for professional archival consultation.

As proof of the growing awareness of the

dearth of dance documentation in the U.S. fol

lowing PRESERVE'S workshops, Shepard de scribed the 1991 report Images of American

Dance: Documenting and Preserving a Cultural

Heritage, co-authored by Leslie Hansen Kopp

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598 FONTES ARTIS MUSICAE 55/4

with William Keens and Mindy N. Levine after days, the first recordings made in Naples, the completion of a study commissioned by the These became Victor records pressed at a plant

U.S. National Endowment for the Arts and the in Hannover, Germany, and soon there was a

Mellon Foundation. Where the 1991 report profusion of Neapolitan songs in the catalogs of

briefly quoted dance critics Marcia Siegel and German record companies. By 1909, a local

John Martin and essayist Susan Sontag, record company was established in Naples by

Shepard quoted them at greater length to Raffaele Esposito. This Icompany grew so much

illustrate both the fundamental problem that by 1924 it was able to acquire Klarophone of documenting dance (it "exists at a perpetual Records in Little Italy, New York City. By 1930, vanishing point") and the vital importance of however, many such ventures were terminated

preserving dance as a unique manifestation of by the Depression and the ascendancy of radio,

American cultural identity. He also passed which eliminated many listeners' need to buy around a copy of Dance Archives: A Practical records, both in the U.S. and Italy.

Manual for Documenting and Preserving the Maria del Carmen Garcia-Mallo (Consejo

Ephemeral Art (Lee, Massachusetts: Preserve, Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Barce

Inc., 1995)—unfortunately no longer in print— lona) read her paper1 on "The Reception of

which appears to present in text and photo- Italian Repertoire in the Spanish Upper Classes

graphs the information Michael Scherker and through the Private Music Collection of

Leslie Kopp provided in their workshops. Anselmo Gonzalez del Valle (1852-1911)." The 22 July session concluded with the elec- Born in Havana, the pianist Anselmo Gonzalez

tion of new officers for the Archives Branch: del Valle received his education in Europe Marguerite Sablonnière (Bibliothèque na- and—thanks to a substantial inheritance— tionale de France), Chair; Paul Banks (Royal settled in a mansion in Oviedo, Asturias, Spain. College of Music, London), Vice Chair; and After the end of the Spanish Civil War, his fam Manuel Erviti (University of California, ily sold his collection of 9,000 scores of piano Berkeley), Secretary. music, songs, and chamber music to the

On 24 July, the session Archives: Global and Institute de Musicologia in Barcelona, now the Local opened with a paper by Anita Pesce Departamento de Musicologia of the Consejo

(Torre del Greco, Naples) and George Brock- Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas. This

Nannestad (Patent Tactics, Denmark) entitled collection of scores, with Gonzalez del Valle's

"Sound Reproduction in Naples in the Acoustic copious annotations documenting perfor

Recording Era: History, Repertoires, Tech- mances at his soirées, formed the basis for

nology, and the Current Status of Its Heritage." Garcia-Mallo's research. Italian repertoire in

Anita Pesce read the paper. The paper— Gonzalez del Valle's collection was most repre illustrated with many images and audio sented by works of these composers (in order

excerpts—traced the development of the of importance): Giuseppe Verdi, Luigi

recording industry in Naples from the time of Cherubini, Giuseppe Martucci, Gioachino the first demonstration there of Edison's Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, Enrico Bossi, phonograph in April 1879 to the end of the Leone Sinigaglia, Vincenzo Bellini, Giuseppe acoustic recording era; the paper also de- Concone, Alessandro Longo, and Carlo Rovere; scribed the response of Neapolitan composers, Garcia-Mallo provided selected lists of the

actors, and music publishers to the new "talk- works of each of these composers to be found

ing machines." At first, Neapolitan musicians in Gonzalez del Valle's collection. In general, created songs in imitation of American records operatic repertoire was pot only represented by

(e.g., Berardo Cantalamessa's "A risata" was a vocal scores but also by fantasies, rhapsodies,

response to George W. Johnson's "The or arrangements for solo piano, piano four

Laughing Song," ca. 1895). In 1900, Emil hands, two pianos, prepared by composers and

Berliner (founder of the Victor Talking arrangers from all over Europe. The significant Machine Company) sent his "talent scout" Fred presence of Italian repertoire in Gonzalez del

Gaisberg to Naples to look for new repertoire; Valle's collection—and in the programs of his

Gaisberg recorded 35 Neapolitan songs in two soirées—stood in stark contrast to the program

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REPORTS

ming in public concerts in late nineteenth

century Spain, where nationalist sentiments in

creasingly demanded programming of Spanish compositions. Therefore, Gonzalez del Valle's

soirées broadened the education of many

among the next generation of Spanish musi

cians, including Felipe Pedrell, Francisco

Asenjo Barbieri, and Antonio Romero.

Federica Nardacci (Istituto di Bibliografia Musicale [IBIMUS], Rome) read the report by Giancarlo Rostirolla (Director, IBIMUS) enti tled "The Inventory of Italian Libraries and Musical Archives 'CABIMUS' and the Ongoing Update Initiatives." CABIMUS (Clavis Archi vorum ac Bibliothecarum Italicarum ad

Musicam Artem Pertinentium)—a twenty-year

old research project—represents the result of

findings promoted by the IBIMUS and the col laboration of associations and students in the

bibliographical and musicological disciplines. Given the realities of repositories in Italy, two decades is a short period of time for the work of

this project. For example, in relation to the

Church or Rome alone, there are repositories

associated with abbeys, basilicas, cathedrals, convents, monasteries, parishes, seminaries, al

most none of which offer routine public access.

So, in addition to large, well managed, libraries and archives, there are all over Italy hundreds

of smaller repositories and private collections

with significant musical content. Moreover,

many archives not principally devoted to music

have some musical content, so searching for it

can be a major task, hopefully not insurmount

able. CABIMUS in its current state may be

consulted by pointing a web browser to

http://www.ibimus.it/ and clicking on the link

"Progetti." The database should be understood

as a "valid starting platform" for a project which

is being regularly updated. This year's updates

are being coordinated by the Lazio region and the results will be published in an IBIMUS

monograph prepared by Manuela Di Donata, Valeria Martini, Giancarlo Rostirolla, and Elena

Zomparelli. There are now 196 repository en

tries for the Lazio region, a 10% increase over

the previous edition of CABIMUS. Dr. Rostirolla described the new questionnaire which was sent to the institutions for the Lazio

project, and he enumerated the data fields in

the questionnaire. Highlights among new infor

599

mation gathered for Lazio are the Library Claudiana of the congregation Nuns

Cistercensi of the Charity, in Anagni, that pre serves some liturgical works of the seventeenth

century; the Civic Library Cavense a Cave,

with a collection of manuscripts and books of

the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the

Civic Museum Ercole Nardi of Poggio Mirteto, with a collection of manuscripts of the Banda

Nazionale Garibaldina dated between the end of the 1800s and 1940-45; the Town Library of Priverno, with 1846 bibliographical musical works among liturgical codes, manuscripts,

correspondences and non-book material; the

Library Diocesan Cardinal Caesar Baronio of Sora, with 100 musical bibliographical works, particularly manuscripts and liturgical books of the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries. With

the completion of the Lazio portion of the proj

ect, the new questionnaire will be used to up

date information and gather new data from

repositories in the remaining regions in Italy.

John Shepard Chair

Reports of the Broadcasting and Orchestra Libraries Branch

The meetings were both chaired by Martie

Severt, the Vice-Chair of the branch, as Jutta

Lambrecht was unable to attend the confer

ence. At the working meeting, various issues of

concern to branch members were discussed.

These included the sharing of resources and

catalogue information, national and regional

groups, such as Scandinavia's NOBU, and the

negotiation of publishers' hire fees to cover

repeat broadcasts. Virginio Georgione from

the San Carlo opera house in Naples was wel

comed. He described his responsibilities as

opera house librarian, which, at the moment, in

clude managing the orchestral stage staff, and

preparing for a substantial number of sym

phonic concerts. Reports were given on the re

cent MOLA conference in Nashville, USA, and the work of the library in the new opera house

in Oslo. The open session was on the theme Digital

Management Databases. Roberto Grisley from

the Archive and Multimedia Library of the

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