Posts from New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center

As the centennial year of The New York Public Library's Stephen A. Schwarzman Building comes to a close and the next 100 years begin, it's a good opportunity to journey through the history, collections, and people behind the scenes of one of the world's premiere music collections. 

A Guest Blog on Victor Herbert's Birthday by Professor William Everett

Victor Herbert’s Babes in Toyland is typical of turn-of-the-century musical theater in that it encompasses various musical styles and tropes drawn from multiple genres. Musical comedy, as Babes in Toyland is described in the libretto, is evident in the comedic dialogue and contemporary references. Extravaganza, the designator it shares with The Wizard of Oz, comes through dazzling spectacle. But it is operetta, the quintessential Continental European style, that concerns us here.

A Guest Blog by Larry Moore

In the NYPL Rare Books Division, among the Townsend Walsh correspondence, there is an undated 1902 letter from director Julian Mitchell to his publicist/business manager, Townsend Walsh, informing Walsh in confidence that he had asked Glen MacDonough to rewrite the libretto for The Wizard of Oz before it opened at New York's Majestic Theatre at Columbus Circle in January 1903. Since MacDonough's copyright libretto for Babes in Toyland was registered with the Library of Congress in January 1903, it's difficult to know which libretto was actually borrowing elements from the other. It's most likely that Mitchell 

Wonderland isn’t technically lost — it was never made, but I found a rare script for this would-be film musical in the Betty Comden Papers. Betty Comden and Adolph Green were the two halves of the longest-running writing partnership in Broadway history. They met in 1933 at New York University and first worked together in the late 30s, writing sketches for the comedy group the Revuers, in which both also performed. They continued writing lyrics and scripts together until Green’s death in 2002. They are known for their lyrics to great Broadway shows like On the Town, Wonderful Town, and Bells are Ringing. 

It was with sad news that we heard of the passing of Walfredo Toscanni, who died on December 31, 2011.  An architect who was based in New York City, he was the grandson of conductor Arturo Toscanini and was instrumental in allowing NYPL's Music Division to obtain the Toscanini Legacy — the massive collection containing the conductor's personal papers, musical scores, and recordings.

Happy New Year!

Just as a new chick emerges from its shell, so does the new year come upon us. This polka was composed by Francis H. Brown (1818-1891), one of numerous and forgotten 19th-century American composers of popular music.

The end of the year frequently inspires an introspective comparison of one’s ambitions against one’s accomplishments and an increased (if temporary) resolve to close the distance between the two. I suspect among the crowd celebrating in Times Square this Saturday night, there will be at least a few web designers who wish they were actors, bloggers who wish they were novelists, and bankers who wish they were rock stars. Hopefully this will be the year for some of them.

Like many who spent their early childhood in those years before home video technology (VCRs, DVDs, Netflix, etc.) became ubquitous, I have fond memories of watching the annual television broadcasts of the 1939 film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz with my family.  Unlike most children, though, I spent much of my later childhood obsessed with the story.  As a six year old, I became a card-carrying member of The International Wizard of Oz Club, read all 14 Oz books by L. Frank Baum, and hunted in used-bookstores for the additional authorized books by Ruth Plumly Thompson, Jack Snow, and Dick Martin.  I vaguely knew that there were dramatic adaptations of The Wizard of 

In the late 1800s Harvey Wilcox and his wife Daeida purchased 160 acres in the rolling California hills for a housing subdivision. They called it Hollywood. In 1911 the first filmmakers arrived from New Jersey; in Hollywood they could shoot outdoors without electrical lighting for over 100 days each year. Others from the east coast soon followed, coming not only for the sunny climate but to escape the clutches of the Motion Pictures Patents Company, or the Edison Trust, which licensed Thomas Edison's patents and often violently enforced their monopoly on cameras, projection equipment, and film distribution. By the time the Trust was successfully prosecuted and dissolved 

Perhaps you have heard of real-time captioning, or CART (Communication Access Realtime Transcription), as it is often called. This is the provision of captions to accompany a presentation or performance in real time. The captions are generally projected onto a screen, where some or all of the audience can read them. CART can potentially enhance experience for several groups of people:

• those who became deaf after becoming proficient in English (or another language), i.e., the post-lingually deaf;
• those with mild to moderate hearing loss, who want to follow along with what they can hear, using the 

A Guest Blog by Project Co-Director, William Everett

Orientalism* and propaganda were common themes in American musical theater and popular song during the years surrounding World War I. Revues frequently included scenes set in the Middle East, and some of Broadway’s most famous composer-lyricists wrote music in direct response to the conflict. Orientalist manifestations include Irving Berlin’s “In My Harem” (1913) and the Omar Khayyam sequence in The Passing Show of 1914, while wartime messages infuse George M. Cohan’s “Over There” (1917) and Irving Berlin’s Yip, Yip, Yaphank (1918). These 

The photographs that you see here were taken on a tour of the Bridgeport, CT Columbia Records factory in 1946. They provide a fascinating look at how music was reproduced in those days. The records we see being made, inspected, and shipped in these images are 10 inch discs that would have been played at a speed of 78 RPM. Today collectors refer to them by their speed - "78s" - but back then they were simply called records.

A few weeks ago, NYPL's Jerome Robbins Dance Division made headlines when it received a major gift of materials from Mikhail Baryshnikov,* the celebrated dancer, actor, and founder of the Baryshnikov Arts Center.

We’ve only scratched the surface in terms of the processing needed to make the archive accessible to the public, but in the meantime, we’ve put together a sneak preview showcasing what we’ve found so far!

Mikhail Baryshnikov: An Archival Preview is on view in the Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts until December 20, 2011. Take 

A Guest Blog by Project Co-Director, William Everett

The German-born composer Gustav Luders (1865-1913) was firmly established in the U.S. when he teamed with librettist-lyricist Frank Pixley (1867-1919) to create The Prince of Pilsen in 1902. The musical comedy, the third of their seven collaborations, was the team's most successful undertaking. (They also created The Burgomeister, 1900; King Dodo, 1901; Woodland, 1904; The Grand Mogul, 1906; Marcelle, 1908; and The Gypsy, 1912.)

I needed a couple of extra archival boxes a few weeks ago, so I went over to a building where the Library keeps materials that do not fit in the main storage areas. While I was there, the reference archivist, Annemarie van Roessel, showed me a collection that made me feel like I had taken a wrong turn on 64th Street and wandered down Diagon Alley. It was a set of 25 boxes of “Magic Scrapbooks” that had belonged to stage magicians between 1832 and 1959. The first scrapbook I looked in was similar to a lot of performers’ scrapbooks: newspaper clippings of articles featuring the performer and his shows. This sort of thing can be incredibly valuable to 

On October 22, “Wikipedia! The Musical!” was staged at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Despite its whimsical name, it was not really a musical but an editathon — a chance to edit Wikipedia with a group of people in an inspiring location. Though its focus was improving articles on musical theater, anyone interested in the performing arts was welcome.

This last week of October, 2011 is Magic Week. Perhaps it's a good time to tell this true story about how I found a life at The New York Public Library:

In the spring of 1923, my grandfather, a magician, disappeared. This well practiced man of magic had pulled off his greatest trick of all. He was never seen again — at least not by my family. His love for the circus could not hold him to a small town, a young wife, and a three-year-old son. He left, and the memory of him was put aside. Occasionally my grandmother would entertain us with simple tricks she had obviously learned from him; but other than that, little was said of this magician and his colossal feat.

Most New Yorkers, when asked to name NYC landmarks, will conjure up the familiar array of iconographic symbols that make up our city: the Statue Liberty, the Empire State Building, Times Square, the Ground Zero Memorial, etc. — but having grown up in Washington Heights, I can’t help but place the George Washington Bridge among the great monuments of Gotham pride. Ever since its completion in 1931, this stunning suspension bridge has remained a sight that never gets old, one which seems so in harmony with its surroundings, and whose effortless beauty belies a remarkable feat of engineering.

Boris Karloff, who will be paid tribute to in a Thursday, October 27 program at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, played Frankenstein’s Monster in three films, the first of which was released 80 years ago next month.