Scope and Content Note
Materials from the Samuel Barber Collection date from 1852-2000, with the bulk of the items 1926-1980. The collection is organized into six series: biographical materials, correspondence, writings, music, photographs, and the Valentin Herranz materials.
The Biographical Materials series documents Samuel Barber's life and career. It contains diaries and journals, awards and diplomas, clippings, programs, personal documents, genealogical materials, and other miscellaneous items. By far the most significant item is Barber’s diary, covering the period September 1926 through January 1928, that documents his daily activities, social engagements, schoolwork, and time he spent as a student at the Curtis Institute of Music studying composition, piano, and voice. Barber was a frequently-honored composer, although the collection does not contain physical representations of all of his awards. It does include the Pulitzer Prize certificate awarded in 1963 for his Piano Concerto, a certificate for his induction into the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and diplomas for honorary doctorates from Brown University and Harvard University. Clippings in the series are about Barber, his work, or performances he attended and include a feature article in the May 1960 edition of Musical America. Programs are from two performances of Antony and Cleopatra, the 1966 premiere at the Metropolitan Opera and a 1975 Juilliard performance after Barber and Menotti had reworked the opera. Also included is a program from Barber’s New York memorial service, held on February 9, 1981. Personal documents represent necessary items such as Barber’s driver’s license, insurance cards, and passports. The remaining miscellaneous items include legal papers that transferred Menotti’s rights for Vanessa to Barber, blank postcards, and an autograph book with birthday wishes and signatures from friends and colleagues. The last section, genealogical materials, contains family trees that trace the maternal side of Barber’s family, the Beattys and Fultons, back to the seventeenth century.
The Correspondence series contains letters between Barber and family members, as well as his correspondence with notable musical and political figures. Barber frequently wrote to his family while he was abroad. In his letters from the summers of 1928-1932, Barber describes leisure, travel, and composition lessons with his Curtis instructor, Rosario Scalero. Both Scalero and Gian Carlo Menotti, who began traveling to Europe with Barber in 1929, were from Italy. Barber documents spending time with both of their families during his travels. Later correspondence to his family is sporadic and dates from 1939 to 1958. This series also contains correspondence to Edith Braun dating from 1939 to 1971. Braun, a colleage of Barber and Menotti, was an accomplished pianist and instructor at the Curtis Institute. The bulk of letters to Barber are from Gian Carlo Menotti and are written in both English and Italian. A small portion are single letters from prominent musical and political figures, including Leonard Bernstein, Eugene Ormandy, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, First Lady Rosalynn Carter, and Senator Robert Kennedy.
The Writings series contains a small quantity of Barber's music theory and musicology notes and a variety of published and unpublished materials authored by others. Significant items include Barber's undated manuscript transcription of text for an operatic adaptation of Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick that was never realized and Barber’s annotated copy of Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Poems and a Song of Love and Despair, some of which he adapted as text for The lovers.
The Music series is divided into two subseries: Music by Barber and Music owned by Barber. The former is mostly printed scores, with and without Barber's annotations. One notable item is an ozalid copy of Concerto for Violin and Orchestra that contains Barber's holograph conducting markings. The latter are items that formed part of Barber’s music library. Some scores are inscribed to Barber by the composer. Included are Louise Homer’s annotated piano-vocal score of Samson et Delila and a holograph manuscript of Your Son and My Son, a song by Sidney Homer. Louise Homer was Barber's aunt and a sought-after operatic contralto. Sidney Homer, her husband, was a composer. Both were close to Barber and mentored him throughout their lifetimes.
Photographs and negatives in the collection feature Barber, his friends, colleagues, and family members. Several are formal portraits of Barber taken throughout his life for professional use. There are photos from a 1959 visit to America by a group of Soviet composers and music scholars that included Dmitri Shostakovich and Dmitri Kabalevsky, and negatives from the 1962 Congress of Soviet Composers in Moscow. Barber was the first American composer to attend the Congress on personal invitation rather than as a representative of the State Department.
Valentin Herranz and Barber met at Spoleto in 1970. Herranz became Barber’s valet and companion as Barber battled depression, alcoholism, and cancer in the last decade of his life. The Valentin Herranz Materials contain a souvenir manuscript leaf of the quintet from Vanessa inscribed by Barber to Herranz, as well as photographs, artwork, and correspondence largely unrelated to Herranz’s association with Barber.