Moldenhauer Archives at the Library of Congress
Scope and Content Note
The Moldenhauer Archives consist of manuscript and printed music, correspondence, photographs, books, newspaper clippings, programs, drawings, and engravings. The items date from the twelfth to the twentieth century, and include documents of and related to composers, musicians, and literary figures, among others.
The music in the collection includes holograph scores or sketches, both published and unpublished, as well as a number of copyist and printed scores, transcriptions, and arrangements by composers and musicians, such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Ernst Bloch, Johannes Brahms, Frédéric Chopin, César Franck, Felix Mendelssohn, Giacomo Puccini, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Arnold Schoenberg, and Anton Webern.
Other composers, musicians, and literary figures that are represented by music and non-musical materials include Georges Auric, Johann Sebastian Bach, Béla Bartók, Hector Berlioz, Georges Bizet, Pierre Boulez, Anton Bruckner, Charles Burney, Feruccio Busoni, Claude Debussy, Frederick Delius, George Frideric Handel, Hermann Hesse, György Ligeti, Federico García Lorca, Pietro Metastasio, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Marice Ravel, Rainer Maria Rilke, Frank Wedekind, Kurt Weill, and Gioseffo Zarlino, among others.
Dates
- Creation: circa 1000-circa 1990
Language of Materials
Collection material chiefly in English, with some in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Czech, and Hungarian
Access and Restrictions
The Moldenhauer Archives at the Library of Congress are open to research. Researchers are advised to contact the Music Division prior to visiting in order to determine whether the desired materials will be available at that time.
Certain restrictions to use or copying of materials may apply.
Copyright Status
Materials from the Moldenhauer Archives at the Library of Congress are governed by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, U.S.C.) and other applicable international copyright laws.
Biographical Sketch
The ardent music collector and mountain climber Hans Moldenhauer was born in Mainz, Germany, in 1906 and died in 1987. During the course of forty years he established the Moldenhauer Archives, a substantial collection of musical and literary documents dating from the twelfth to the twentieth century.
Moldenhauer emigrated to the United States in 1938, settled in mountainous Spokane, Washington, in 1939, and served in the U.S. Mountain Troops during World War II. In 1942, he embarked upon a career in music collecting, performing, and writing, and founded the Spokane Conservatory. In 1943, he married his piano pupil, Rosaleen Jackman, to whose memory he would later dedicate his Archives. When Moldenhauer was diagnosed with the incurable retinitis pigmentosa and told he would soon be blind, he focused much more of his energy on acquiring the materials for the growing Moldenhauer Archives.
Moldenhauer procured manuscripts from composers such as Alban Berg, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Liszt, and Witold Lutosławski, and obtained numerous items from the archives of Gustav Mahler, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and Arnold Schoenberg. He acquired the Webern Archive in the 1960s and with his wife Rosaleen wrote the seminal biography Anton Webern: A Chronicle of His Life and Work (New York: Knopf, 1978), along with other publications on Webern. Hans Moldenhauer died in 1987.
The Moldenhauer bequest to the Library of Congress in 1987 consisted of more than 3,500 music manuscripts, letters, and other materials. The Library also received funds to produce a volume, now published, The Rosaleen Moldenhauer Memorial: Music History from Primary Sources: A Guide to the Moldenhauer Archives, edited by Jon Newsom and Alfred Mann (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 2000) [ISBN 0-8444-0987-1].
Extent
3,850 items (approximately)
139 boxes
1 mapcase folder
207 linear feet
Abstract
The Moldenhauer Archives consist of manuscript and printed music, correspondence, photographs, books, clippings, programs, and artwork dating from the twelfth to the twentieth century. The music includes holograph scores and sketches, as well as a number of copyist and printed scores, transcriptions, and arrangements. Represented musical and literary figures include, among many others, George Auric, Johann Sebastian Bach, Béla Bartók, Ludwig van Beethoven, Hector Berlioz, Georges Bizet, Ernst Bloch, Pierre Boulez, Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner, Feruccio Busoni, Frédéric Chopin, Claude Debussy, George Frideric Handel, Hermann Hesse, György Ligeti, Felix Mendelssohn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Giacomo Puccini, Maurice Ravel, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Kurt Weill, and Gioseffo Zarlino.
Organization of the Moldenhauer Archives at the Library of Congress
The collection is organized in two series:
Provenance
Gift; Hans Moldenhauer
Bequest; Hans Moldenhauer; 1987
Gift; Mary Moldenhauer; 1988-
Accruals
No further accruals are expected.
Online Content
Digitized images are available via links from this finding aid.
Transfers
Two analog cassettes, nine acetate discs (and tape copies), and thirteen open reel audiotapes from the Moldenhauer Archives at the Library of Congress have been transferred to the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division, where they are identified as part of the Hans Moldenhauer Audio Materials (MAVIS collection no. 6373). An inventory of these materials are available in Appendix A.
Other Repositories
In addition to the Library of Congress, eight other insitutions hold substantial amounts of materials from the Moldenhauer Archives: in the United States, at Harvard University, Northwestern University, Washington State University, and Whitworth College; the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel; the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich; the Zentralbibliothek in Zurich; and the Stadtarchiv und Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna.
Processing History
Jon Newsom and Carol Lynn Ward-Bamford led processing of the Moldenhauer Archives at the Library of Congress in the 1990s with the assistance of Susannah Lyson, Linda Fairtile, Gail Miller, Michael O'Brien, Ann Silverberg, Margaret Ball, Esperanza Barrocal, Christine Bisacco, Gregory Capaldini, Betsy Dean, Evelyn Donnelly, Dee Gallo, Marcelo Hazan, Chun-Zen Huang, and Alejandro Muzio. Library staff assisted through their expert knowledge of languages and subjects: Carol Armbruster (French), E. Paul Frank (Hungarian), Grant Harris (European languages), George Kovtun (Czech), Everette E. Larson (Hispanic Literature), Kevin LaVine (Russian), and David Skelly (Russian). Wilda Heiss was instrumental in converting the inventory into a DOS database.
In 2021, Jane Cross processed and described the Segovia, Briskman, and oversized items that were stacked loose on the shelf, and then added those new boxes at the end of the collection. She also ensured that Conservation created phase boxes for several shelf items that required housing, then returned them to the shelf where she found them. Conservation also assisted with placing the large, framed paintings upright in the rack (location "Artwork"), and then updated the finding aid accordingly. Cross added links to entries with digital surrogates availalbe online.
As a telework project in 2021, Rachel McNellis updated the finding for most entries. Nearly all of the description was located in the title field, necessitating that she separate this information into title, date, physical description, and different types of amplifying notes. She also removed all abbreviations. All told, McNellis edited 3,425 entries in the XML document, bringing the finding aid up to current EAD3 and Music Division style standards.
Source
- Moldenhauer, Hans (Collector, Person)
Subject
- Auric, Georges, 1899-1983--Autographs. (Person)
- Bach, Johann Sebastian, 1685-1750--Autographs. (Person)
- Bartók, Béla, 1881-1945--Correspondence. (Person)
- Beethoven, Ludwig van, 1770-1827--Autographs. (Person)
- Berlioz, Hector, 1803-1869--Autographs. (Person)
- Bizet, Georges, 1838-1875--Autographs. (Person)
- Bloch, Ernest, 1880-1959--Autographs. (Person)
- Boulez, Pierre, 1925-2016--Autographs. (Person)
- Boulez, Pierre, 1925-2016--Correspondence. (Person)
- Brahms, Johannes, 1833-1897--Autographs. (Person)
- Bruckner, Anton, 1824-1896--Correspondence. (Person)
- Burney, Charles, 1726-1814--Correspondence. (Person)
- Busoni, Ferruccio, 1866-1924--Correspondence. (Person)
- Chopin, Frederic, 1810-1849--Autographs. (Person)
- Debussy, Claude, 1862-1918--Correspondence. (Person)
- Delius, Frederick, 1862-1934--Autographs. (Person)
- Franck, César, 1822-1890--Autographs. (Person)
- García Lorca, Federico, 1898-1936--Autographs. (Person)
- Handel, George Frideric, 1685-1759--Correspondence. (Person)
- Hesse, Hermann, 1877-1962--Correspondence. (Person)
- Ligeti, György, 1923-2006--Autographs. (Person)
- Ligeti, György, 1923-2006--Correspondence. (Person)
- Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix, 1809-1847--Autographs. (Person)
- Metastasio, Pietro, 1698-1782--Correspondence. (Person)
- Moldenhauer, Hans. (Person)
- Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 1756-1791--Autographs. (Person)
- Puccini, Giacomo, 1858-1924--Autographs. (Person)
- Ravel, Maurice, 1875-1937--Correspondence. (Person)
- Rilke, Rainer Maria, 1875-1926--Correspondence. (Person)
- Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolay, 1844-1908--Autographs. (Person)
- Schoenberg, Arnold, 1874-1951--Autographs. (Person)
- Webern, Anton, 1883-1945--Autographs. (Person)
- Wedekind, Frank, 1864-1918--Autographs. (Person)
- Zarlino, Gioseffo, 1517-1590--Autographs. (Person)
- Title
- Moldenhauer Archives at the Library of Congress
- Author
- Processed by the Music Division of the Library of Congress
- Date
- 2005
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Part of the Music Division Repository
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