Scope and Content Note
The Sergei Rachmaninoff Archive is comprised of material that documents the life and career of Russian émigré composer, pianist and conductor Sergei Rachmaninoff. While much of this Archive's primary source material dates from after his departure from Russia in 1917, and continues until his death in 1943, the Archive also contains vast documentation compiled by Rachmaninoff's sister-in-law and biographer, Sophie Satin (née Sofiia Aleksandrovna Satina), who had known the composer since his youth, and which reflects the entire span of the composer's professional and personal life. Nearly every document held within this Archive bears traces of Satin's attention, either by its arrangement – she was the first to organize it according to a coherent format – or by the copious annotations that she made to the Archive's contents.
Box 1, in the Archive, contains a copy of the fuller version of this finding aid. It provides more description of and further details about many of the materials in the Archive. It is also available to researchers in the Library of Congress Performing Arts Reading Room, and may be made available electronically by request.
Of particular significance are Rachmaninoff's own holograph music manuscript scores and sketches, representing his compositional process and creative thought during the last half of his life. These scores, listed in the Musical Scores series, include not only manuscript and published scores of Rachmaninoff's works, but those of other composers as well, reflecting the musical interests of the composer and his family members (in whose possession several of these musical scores apparently originated).
The substantial correspondence in the Archive was, according to Sophie Satin's original organizational format, divided into items written by Rachmaninoff (Correspondence by SR subseries) and items sent to him or to his wife (Correspondence to SR subseries). This arrangement has been retained in the present organization of the Archive.
Biographical documentation follows within the Writings, Official Documents, Awards, Honors, and Tributes, Programs of SR's Performances, Articles and Clippings, and Financial Papers series. Much of the material held within these series has been compiled, collected and/or arranged by Sophie Satin.
The Iconography series primarily includes original photographs and reproductions of original photographs. Reproductions of paintings, sculptures and renderings portraying Rachmaninoff, generally from published sources, are also held within this series. Its contents are arranged in chronological order (or, in the case of undated material, in approximate chronological order), and where appropriate, grouped by family relationship, place or event. Please note that additional photographs are attached to correspondence housed throughout this Archive's Correspondence to SR subseries; these may be identified by a keyword search of that subseries for the word "photograph."
The Books and Publications series consists of published textual material –books, journals and magazines, monographs and offprints, and commemorative volumes – held within the private libraries of SR, NR, Sophie Satin, the composer's daughters Irina Wolkonsky and Tatiana Conus, Irina's daughter Sophie Wolkonsky, and other family members. The contents of this series are arranged alphabetically by author's name or by publication title.
The contents of Boxes 70 through 76 represent publications that are either annotated or not otherwise held within the Library of Congress collections. The contents of Boxes 77 through 81 represent material that is unannotated and/or duplicated within the Library's collections.
The Realia series includes two small enamel pins, held within Box 4, as well as SR's desk and chair, presently on display in the Library of Congress Performing Arts Reading Room (PARR).
The Papers of Sophie Satin series consists of a discrete collection of material that was donated to the Library of Congress in 1976 by the estate of Sophie Satin (née Sofiia Aleksandrovna Satina; 1879-1975), SR's first cousin and later his sister-in-law (she was the sister of SR's wife, Natalie). Satin emigrated to the United States in 1921, and because of her professional training in botany, was, in 1942, invited to become a research associate of noted American botanist Alfred Blakeslee (1874-1954) at the Smith College Genetics Experiment Station (Northampton, Massachusetts). By 1945, Satin had been named visiting professor of botany at Smith, a position that she was to occupy for the next ten years.
Throughout her life, Satin remained devoted to preserving Rachmaninoff's legacy, pursuing an avocation as his biographer and amassing a tremendous amount of information on his life and career. Satin's decades-long research endeavors have resulted in the substantial volume of documentation held within the Rachmaninoff Archive which was created and assembled by Satin herself. The Archive's present organization is based largely on Satin's original plan.
While much of the original material found in today's Sergei Rachmaninoff Archive (largely donated to the Library of Congress by Natalie Rachmaninoff just prior to her death in 1951) is comprised of material that had been created by Sophie Satin, an additional cache of material that had been in Satin's possession was donated by her estate to the Library in 1976 after her death. Although a significant portion of this additional donation has been interfiled within the larger Archive in the years since its acquisition by the Library, other material has remained separate and distinct; it is this latter material that forms the Archive's present Papers of Sophie Satin series.
The Satin Papers consist primarily of research notes and published material relating to Rachmaninoff which was compiled by Satin over the course of her lifetime. Also included are various notes, drafts and other materials documenting the book Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music (1956), a biography by Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda (with Satin's assistance prominently credited; drafts of this biography are in two distinct versions, designated "Draft A" and "Draft B"); copies (in English and Russian) of Satin's own autobiography; drafts of articles and lectures about Rachmaninoff; as well as biographical material collected by Satin after the death of both her sister and brother-in-law.
In addition to the fuller version of the finding aid in Box 1, Boxes 1-3 contain draft and final versions of the Archive's original organizational plan as devised by Sophie Satin; two boxes of card records, prepared by Sophie Satin, of individual items and documents held within the Archive; and a list of the contents of the Sergei Rachmaninoff Archive at the Glinka Museum, Moscow.