Scope and Content Note
The Jacobo Ficher Collection spans the period 1864-1997, with the bulk of the materials dating from 1919-1978. It includes holograph and manuscript music, biographical documents, correspondence, writings, programs, and scrapbooks. These materials portray Ficher as a composer who was very much a key figure in the creation and artistic trends of Argentinean music in the twentieth century. He also developed a brilliant career as an orchestra conductor, prominent teacher, and violinist. Musical life in Buenos Aires during the 1920s was very active, and the local composers, many of them trained in Europe, were at the epicenter of musical nationalism in Argentina, a cultural expression based mainly on the integration of native and folk themes into art music.
However, a group of young composers were looking toward transitional styles and new European trends, and Ficher felt particuarly at home among these individuals. Together with Juan José, José María Castro, Juan Carlos Paz, and Gilardo Gilardi, he founded the Grupo Renovación in 1929, which rapidly became the leading organization for the promotion of a new musical forces in Argentina. Being a Russian Jew with strong musical roots, Ficher used the new musical languages available and blended them with traditional Russian and Jewish tunes in his early works. He was especially attracted to Argentinean folk music and popular melodies, such as tangos and milongas. Throughout his career, Ficher's style reflected Slavic influences and remained largely conservatively balanced, with an occassional foray into the avant-garde.
Music materials in the collection represent a near-complete spread of Ficher's compositional interests. The majority are holograph manuscript scores for five genres: dramatic, orchestral, chamber, vocal, and solo piano. Among these works are four ballets, two operas, ten symphonies, several cantatas, overtures, concertos, serenatas, and a variety of other minor works. Complete sets of vocal and orchestral parts are present for the operas and symphonies. El oso: op. 75 (1952) and Pedido de mano: op.84 (1955-1956) are based on Anton Chekov texts and include libretti in both Russian and Spanish. Ficher also composed for numerous combinations of chamber instruments in varying forms, including string and wind trios, quartets, quintets, suites, and sonatas. Notable among these is String quartet, op. 35, recipient of the 1937 Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Prize and premiered at the Latin American Chamber Music Festival in Mexico City. Additional compositions for voice, chorus, and piano round out the music in the collection.
The Biographical Materials consist of a handful of personal documents in Russian that belong to the composer, his wife, and his family, including: birth and death certificates, passports, identifications, and documents relating to Ficher's studies at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and Odessa Conservatory.
Correspondence in the collection comprises approximately 3,000 letters received over a period of more than sixty years. These present a diverse picture of Ficher's communications with family, friends, composers, acquaintances, and pupils. A substantial amount of the letters are in Russian, many from key individuals during his youth, such as Nicolai Malko, Fabien Sevitsky, Joseph Roisman, and Lazare Saminsky. There are also several letters from Paul Kletzki, Gregory Stone, Stanislaw Wislocki, Sir Adrian Boult, Hugo Kortschak, and others. Especially noteworthy is the correspondence from Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge and Aaron Copland, with whom he developed a friendship during Copland's frequent visits to Buenos Aires. Many of Ficher's internationally scattered pupils also wrote frequently about their unique experiences and the development of musical life between the 1950s and 1970s, chiefly in France, the United States, and Russia. Languages present include: Spanish, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, French, English, and Yiddish.
The Writings form a small series that includes, among other materials, Ficher's lectures about his own works, a catalog of his compositions, honorary acceptance speeches, and presentations he gave in Tel-Aviv during his official trip to Israel. It also contains several lectures by distinguished Argentinean musicologists and critics about the composer's life and works.
Programs in the collection range from early days of the composer's youth in Odessa to world premieres performed after his death in 1978. Noteworthy among these is a program/poster in Russian with Ficher as soloist in Bruch's Concerto for violin and orchestra no. 1 in G minor, op. 26 with the Soviet Odessa Philharmonic under L. P. Steinberg, held on August 1, 1919. There is also a large poster announcing the world premiere of his opera, Pedido de mano: op. 84 at Buenos Aires's Teatro Alvear during the 1968 season. The Scrapbooks are five 200-page volumes, well organized and numbered by year. These contain a large amount of critical reviews from Argentinean newspapers and other periodicals, as well as photographs, letters, and programs.