Title Page | Collection Summary | History of the Collection | Biographical/Organizational Note | Scope and Content | Arrangement
Scope and Content Note
The Charles Hambitzer manuscripts consist of sixteen orchestral scores or part sets for tone poems and incidental music, as well as several short pieces for various instruments and approximately twenty-five songs and stage numbers in piano-vocal format. Sketches and miscellaneous fragments are also represented. Although George Gershwin once recalled that Hambitzer, his first significant music teacher, “wrote what I then considered the finest light music,” there appears to be no connection between these manuscripts and Gershwin’s own compositions.