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Tuesday, February 28, 2006 (AP)
Secret Trove of Music Donated to Juilliard
By MARTIN STEINBERG, Associated Press Writer
(02-28) 15:00 PST New York (AP) --
Happy birthday, Juilliard School.
The conservatory, which is celebrating its 100th year, has something more
to cheer about. It has just received a priceless trove of manuscripts of
works by such immortal composers as Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Brahms,
among many others.
Bruce Kovner, who dropped out of a Harvard Ph.D. program and drove a New
York taxi before starting a hedge fund that helped get him on Forbes
magazine's 400 richest list, secretly amassed the collection during the
past decade of auction hunting.
The self-described music lover and amateur keyboard player who was once
"absolutely terrorized" by a harmony professor at Juilliard's evening
division announced the donation at a news conference Tuesday, two days
after his 61st birthday.
"I started collecting just for the personal pleasure of being close to
these icons of the greatest musical achievements in Western music," said
Kovner, chairman of Juilliard's board and founder of Caxton Associates
LLC. "At a certain point I realized that it would be better to make this
collection available to the rest of the world rather than to keep it under
a mattress."
Works in the Juilliard Manuscript Collection range from the 1680s —
Purcell's opera "Dido and Aeneas" — to Schnittke compositions of the
1990s. Also included are works by Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner,
Mahler, Copland and Stravinsky.
"It's a historic day at the Juilliard School," said Joseph W. Polisi, the
conservatory's president. "The gift represents one of the finest
collections of musical manuscripts to be amassed in modern times."
It consists of sketches, editions prepared for the printer and original
manuscripts. The neatly printed "Dido" is an 18th century volume that's
one of the oldest surviving manuscripts of Purcell's opera. Other items
appear as uncertain scribbles and include clarifications from the composer
about how the music should sound. Such notations didn't always make it to
the publisher, scholars at the news conference said.
Speaking of the collection's works by Beethoven, musicologist Maynard
Solomon said: "They are reflections of his mind at moments of his supreme
creative achievements. But sometimes they give us an unexpected portrait
of a composer in the midst of doubt and uncertainty."
Among Kovner's acquisitions was Beethoven's 80-page piano transcription of
the "Grosse Fuge," discovered recently at a suburban Philadelphia
seminary. Kovner, the now no-longer-anonymous buyer, purchased it for
$1.95 million late last year at Sotheby's in London.
It also includes the first known sketches and manuscript prepared for the
printer of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, with corrections handwritten by the
composer, and the autograph score of the final scene of Mozart's opera "Le
Nozze di Figaro."
"When I saw the scope of the collection I was speechless," said Michael
Griffel, a Schubert expert and chairman of the music history department.
"Suffice it to say that life at Juilliard will never be the same. It will
be an expanded paradise for music scholars."
Christoph Wolff, a Bach expert at Harvard University, noted that the
collection includes works for a variety of genres and from many different
European countries and America.
"What I find particularly striking is the richness and balance and the
focus of this collection, which covers 300 years of musical history from
the late 17th to the late 20th century," he said.
The collection will be housed at the school in September 2009, after
construction of a climate-controlled reading room. It will be available to
scholars, performers and the public by appointment. Until then, requests
for access will be considered, said Juilliard librarian Jane Gottleib.
Every item will be microfilmed and digitized and eventually placed on a
Web site, she said. Special care and kid-glove handling will be needed
because of the high acid content of the paper.
Participants at the news conference said the collection should help bridge
the divide between scholars and performers.
"I think that ... the Bach manuscript or the changes that Mozart made in
the score or the markings absolutely unknown and authentic on Brahms' Opus
118 are going to inspire performers, are going to inspire a generation of
students here," Kovner said.
Secret Trove of Music Donated to Juilliard
By MARTIN STEINBERG, Associated Press Writer
(02-28) 15:00 PST New York (AP) --
Happy birthday, Juilliard School.
The conservatory, which is celebrating its 100th year, has something more
to cheer about. It has just received a priceless trove of manuscripts of
works by such immortal composers as Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Brahms,
among many others.
Bruce Kovner, who dropped out of a Harvard Ph.D. program and drove a New
York taxi before starting a hedge fund that helped get him on Forbes
magazine's 400 richest list, secretly amassed the collection during the
past decade of auction hunting.
The self-described music lover and amateur keyboard player who was once
"absolutely terrorized" by a harmony professor at Juilliard's evening
division announced the donation at a news conference Tuesday, two days
after his 61st birthday.
"I started collecting just for the personal pleasure of being close to
these icons of the greatest musical achievements in Western music," said
Kovner, chairman of Juilliard's board and founder of Caxton Associates
LLC. "At a certain point I realized that it would be better to make this
collection available to the rest of the world rather than to keep it under
a mattress."
Works in the Juilliard Manuscript Collection range from the 1680s —
Purcell's opera "Dido and Aeneas" — to Schnittke compositions of the
1990s. Also included are works by Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner,
Mahler, Copland and Stravinsky.
"It's a historic day at the Juilliard School," said Joseph W. Polisi, the
conservatory's president. "The gift represents one of the finest
collections of musical manuscripts to be amassed in modern times."
It consists of sketches, editions prepared for the printer and original
manuscripts. The neatly printed "Dido" is an 18th century volume that's
one of the oldest surviving manuscripts of Purcell's opera. Other items
appear as uncertain scribbles and include clarifications from the composer
about how the music should sound. Such notations didn't always make it to
the publisher, scholars at the news conference said.
Speaking of the collection's works by Beethoven, musicologist Maynard
Solomon said: "They are reflections of his mind at moments of his supreme
creative achievements. But sometimes they give us an unexpected portrait
of a composer in the midst of doubt and uncertainty."
Among Kovner's acquisitions was Beethoven's 80-page piano transcription of
the "Grosse Fuge," discovered recently at a suburban Philadelphia
seminary. Kovner, the now no-longer-anonymous buyer, purchased it for
$1.95 million late last year at Sotheby's in London.
It also includes the first known sketches and manuscript prepared for the
printer of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, with corrections handwritten by the
composer, and the autograph score of the final scene of Mozart's opera "Le
Nozze di Figaro."
"When I saw the scope of the collection I was speechless," said Michael
Griffel, a Schubert expert and chairman of the music history department.
"Suffice it to say that life at Juilliard will never be the same. It will
be an expanded paradise for music scholars."
Christoph Wolff, a Bach expert at Harvard University, noted that the
collection includes works for a variety of genres and from many different
European countries and America.
"What I find particularly striking is the richness and balance and the
focus of this collection, which covers 300 years of musical history from
the late 17th to the late 20th century," he said.
The collection will be housed at the school in September 2009, after
construction of a climate-controlled reading room. It will be available to
scholars, performers and the public by appointment. Until then, requests
for access will be considered, said Juilliard librarian Jane Gottleib.
Every item will be microfilmed and digitized and eventually placed on a
Web site, she said. Special care and kid-glove handling will be needed
because of the high acid content of the paper.
Participants at the news conference said the collection should help bridge
the divide between scholars and performers.
"I think that ... the Bach manuscript or the changes that Mozart made in
the score or the markings absolutely unknown and authentic on Brahms' Opus
118 are going to inspire performers, are going to inspire a generation of
students here," Kovner said.
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