Notes for Notes

The Queens College Music Library, which serves the Aaron Copland School of Music, recently received $386,000 from the estate of Claude V. Palisca upon the death of his wife, Elizabeth Keitel.

Palisca (1921–2001) earned his bachelor’s degree in music from Queens College in 1943 before earning his master’s and Ph.D. in musicology from Harvard in 1948 and 1954. Shortly after Palisca’s death in 2001, Keitel donated his rare books to Queens College along with funds for the processing of these materials, which are now available to researchers in the Special Collections Department in the Benjamin Rosenthal Library, Ms. Keitel also donated the funds to purchase and install the Music Library display cases.

This generous bequest will facilitate the creation of an endowment to fund acquisitions for the Music Library, and will fund minor renovations to the circulation desk. Renovating our lone service point will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our public services. With library acquisitions in all subject areas suffering from repeated budget cuts, this endowment will significantly improve annual acquisitions, allowing us to build the collection and better support the Aaron Copland School of Music curricula.

Jennifer Oates
Queens College, the City University of New York

Michigan State University has acquired the Alfredo Levy Conservatory Collection, originally held by the Conservatorio de Música Alfredo Levy in Havana, Cuba. The Conservatorio flourished from 1947 to 1959. Mr. Levy was active as director and pianist, and was also a well-known accompanist and composer. He formed extensive ties within Cuba and in other countries, including the United States.

The collection remained intact after the Conservatorio closed. In 2000, Gary Marks, a Chicago-area collector, purchased the material. In 2002, Dr. Ricardo Lorenz, MSU associate professor of music and chair of music composition, became aware of its existence, and later encouraged the acquisition of the collection by the MSU Libraries. Dr. Miriam Escudero, director of musical patrimony of the office of the historian of the city of Havana, Cuba, supported the acquisition by the MSU Libraries as an important measure to ensure its preservation and access by students and scholars. The Alfredo Levy Collection was purchased by the libraries in May 2014.

Over 1,000 scores, manuscripts, correspondence, and ephemeral items are included, in varying states of preservation. Among the unique items are manuscripts by nineteenth-century Cuban composers Ignacio Cervantes and José White, first-edition scores by American composers Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Henry Cowell, and correspondence between Mr. Levy and some of Cuba’s most important composers prior to the Revolution, including Joaquín Nin-Culmell, Alejandro García Caturla and Gonzalo Roig. Other items had previously belonged to influential Cuban musicians, such as opera star Rosalia Chalia, the first soprano to record operatic arias, in the late 1890s and early 1900s.

The collection will be cataloged, with appropriate conservation measures applied, and housed in the MSU Libraries’ Special Collections.

Mary Black Junttonen
Michigan State University

At its recent meeting in Antwerp, the IAML council and general assembly approved the appointment of James P. Cassaro as the incoming editor of the association’s journal, Fontes Artes Musicae. His appointment will begin in January 2015, with his first issue appearing in January 2016. Notes congratulates its distinguished former editor on this new appointment!