Finding Aid for Albert Stoessel papers, 1907-1943.

• Descriptive Summary
• Biography
• Scope and Content
• Organization
• Container List
  • Series 1: Personal Correspondence, 1914-1943
    • Outgoing Correspondence of Albert Stoessel, 1914-1943
    • Incoming Correspondence to Albert Stoessel, 1937
    • Incoming Correspondence of Julia Pickard Stoessel, 1907-1927.
  • Series 2: Professional Correspondence, 1919-1943
  • Series 3: Literary and Musical Productions, 1918-1942
    • Program drafts, 1918.
    • Notes and Statements.
    • Manuscripts, Articles, Letters to Editor.
  • Series 4: Scores and Printed Material, 1919-1943
    • Programs and texts
    • Scores owned by Albert Stoessel.
    • Published scores composed by Albert Stoessel.
    • Holograph scores by Albert Stoessel.
  • Series 5: Photographs, 1909-[ca.1942]
    • Individual photographs, 1909-1942.
    • Photographic album.
  • Series 6: Memorial Concert Programs, Professional Biographies, Obituaries, and Official Memorials, 1916-1943

Source

The Albert Stoessel Papers were donated to the New York Public Library by his son, Frederic Stoessel, in 1988.

Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions to access.

User Restrictions

For permission to copy or publish please contact the Music Division.

Preferred Citation

The Albert Stoessel Papers, JPB 89-91, Music Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

Albert Stoessel was born in St. Louis, Missouri on Octobert 11, 1894. He studied music at the Berlin Hochschule as a pupil of Emanuel Wirth and Willy Hess. At 19 he began his professional playing career with the Hess String Quartet, and toured as a violin solist in Switzerland, Holland, and Germany. He returned to the United States in 1915 for a concert tour, appeared with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Symphony, and lived in Boston until 1917 while pursuing his career as a violinist and composer.

Stoessel enlisted in the United States Army in 1917, becoming a leiutenant in the 301st Infantry American Expeditionary Forces and leader fo the regimental band at Camp Devens. Stoessel went to France in 1918 wth the 76th Division as bandmaster of the 301st. He became Director of the AEF Bandmaster's School of Chaumont, France, organized by Walter Damrosch.

After his discharge in 1919, Stoessel performed as a soloist with the Boston Symphony and toured with Enrico Caruso's last tour. In 1921 he became the assistant conductor of the Oratorio Society of New York under Walter Damrosch. For seven years, beginning in 1923, he was the head of the New York University Music Department, from which he was awarded a master's degree in 1924. He left to become director fo the departments of opera and orchestra at the Juilliard Graduate School of Music in 1931. He became conductor fo the Worcester Festival of the Worcester (Massachusetts) County Musical Association in 1925, and conducted the Westchester Festival in White Plains, New York, from 1927 to 1933. Stoessel first began work with the Chautauqua Institution in 19212 as a conductor, and in 1929 he was appointed Musical Director.

Albert Stoessel composed the opera Garrick in 1936, wrote a teatise in 1919 entitled The Technique of the Baton, and composed a number of violin, piano, choral, and orchestra pieces. His wife, Julia Pickard Stoessel, had also been a violin student in Berlin. They were married June 27, 1917, and had two sons, Edward and Fredric.

It was while onstage conducting an orchestra for the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, that Stoessel died of a heart attack on May 12, 1943.

The files in the collection contain personal and professional correspondence; drafts of articles, speeches, and musical programs; scores owned by Stoessel (often with his notes in the margins); miscellaneous scores composed by Stoessel; photographs; and memorials, professional biographies, and obituaries.

Stoessel's correspondence makes up the majority of the collection, much of it personal letters to Julia Pickard, whom he married in 1917. (One file of letters to her which are not from Albert Stoessel in included in the collection.) As Julia Pickard also was a trained violinist, Stoessel's letters to her are often musically oriented. These letters are also of professional interest as they reveal details of Stoessel's early career as a violinist, and the development of his interest in conducting during World War I. Meetings with some of the leading musical figures of the day, such as Walter Damrosch and André Caplet, are mentioned in these letters.

Stoessel's professional correspondence includes a file of seven letters from Walter Damrosch who functioned as Stoessel's conducting mentor. Stoessel was Damrosch's assistant conductor for the Oratorio Society of New York in the early 1920s. The majority of the professional correspondence relates to two subjects: a proposed position for Stoessel during World War II as a musical advisor in the Army Specialist Corps, and Stoessel's unsuccessful application to become conductor of the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. Both these subjects occur in 1942-1943. Earlier correspondence is minimal, and only two letters exist in the collection pertaining to Stoessel's years at New York University.

A few handwritten manuscripts of articles and speeches are also contained within the collection, interesting for their insights into Stoessel's musical opinions. Conducting notes are apparent throughout Stoessel's two Bach scores from 1927 and 1943, offering comparisons in the evolution of his conducting style of these works. A number of his own compositions, including the full score of his opera Garrick, also exist within the collection.

The photographic series in the collection is primarily personal, including family and vacation pictures. Professionally, there is an inscribed photograph of Walter Damrosch, another of Eric Leinsdorf, Albert Stoessel conducting, and Stoessel and Julia Stoessel with the Chautauqua Choir. The biographical notices and extensive memorials after Stoessel's death help to organize and clarify the sequence of his career, and illuminate the influence he had on the various societies and schools with which he worked.

An interesting theme running through the collection is the emphasis on Stoessel's "American-ness" in composition and conducting. Stoessel's career flowered during the period in which Americna music was breaking away from European influence and imitation and finding its own path. The Albert Stoessel Papers are a valuable research tool on many fronts, as Stoessel played a significant part in the development of 20th century American music, was a prominent figure as a conductor, and was highly influential in music education, in composition, promoting and advocating choral music.

The papers and photographs in this collection represent the activities of Albert Stoessel from 1909 to 1943. The bulk of the collection falls between 1915 and 1919, and the entire collection traces his musical and personal life. Chronological arrangement has been used primarily, with some subdivisions by subject, because of the personal and professional information interwined throughout much of the early correspondence, and the fragmentary nature of many of the papers.

A clipping file on Albert Stoessel forms part of the Music Division's vast holdings of clipping files. A useful and informative supplement to the Albert Stoessel Papers, the file contains reviews of Stoessel's performances both on violin and as a conductor over the years, interviews, and biographical notices.

The New York University Archives also holds material on Albert Stoessel's years at the New York University Department of Music, years which are incompletely represented in this collection.