Scope and Content Note
Don Christlieb made an indelible mark on bassoon performance in the United States as an orchestral musician, innovative reed maker, and supporter of works by contempory composers. He was born and raised in California. His maternal side of the family was musical; his uncle was Patrick S. Gilmore, an Irish-born American band director known for assembling 100+ member ensembles for concerts. Christlieb started playing the saxophone in junior high school but switched to the bassoon in high school after hearing a recording of Mozart's Concerto for Bassson performed by Archie Camden. He joined a Coast Artillery band after graduating from Los Angeles Commmunity College and later the Works Progress Adminisitration (WPA) Symphony Orchestra during the Great Depression. He made a successful career performing in Hollywood studio orchestras during the "Golden Age" of American cinema, playing principal bassoon on more than 700 film scores by Erich Korngold, Alfred Newman, Bernard Hermann, and Jerry Goldsmith, among others. Titles include Gone with the Wind (1939), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Citizen Kane (1941), Call Me Madam (1953), The King and I (1956), The Sound of Music (1965), and Star Wars (1977). Christlieb performed frequently with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and was a strong supporter of contemporary classical music. He photographed musicians with whom he interacted and recorded with in the Los Angeles area; 32 of these photographs comprise the collection. Prominent musicians featured include composers Bernard Hermann, Alfred Newman, Aaron Copland, and Igor Stravinsky, conductor Alex North, and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, II. While most of the photographs are undated, he likely took them from 1936 to 1988. In 1992, Christlieb loaned the prints to the Library of Congress. Library staff made copies and returned the originals. Some of the photos appear in Christlieb's autobiography, Recollections of a First Chair Bassoonist: 52 Years in the Hollywood Studio Orchestras (1996).