Filip Šír, coordinator for Digitization of Audio Documents at the National Museum (Prague), will talk of his work to track down and preserve early 20th century Czech sound recordings made in the United States. Ed. Jedlička cylinder recordings from the Music Library’s collections will also be exhibited. Filip’s book on this topic, co-authored with collector Gabriel Gossel and published in 2018, talks about a number of important Czech recording artists and producers, including Jedlička and Chicago-based Joseph Jiran.
If you’re interested in archives, historical sound recordings, immigrant cultures, or Czech history, be sure to attend!
Chamber music has been integral to the educational and creative life of the University of Iowa School of Music for over a century. Below are a few examples, including audio clips, from 1972 to the present that allow you to experience this delightful form of music making – whether you were there to hear it in performance or not.
Iowa String Quartet / Stradivari String Quartet
Founded in 1936, the Iowa String Quartet / Stradivari String Quartet included faculty performers Allen Ohmes, John Ferrell, Don Haines (violin), Bill Preucil (viola), Joel Krosnick, and Charles Wendt (cello).
Audio excerpt: Quartet in Eb Major, K. 428 / Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The Stradivari Quartet performed a cycle of ten Mozart string quartets during the inauguration of the new Music Building when it opened in 1972. This work launched the series, which took three recitals to complete.
Maia Quartet
The Maia Quartet came to the University of Iowa as Quartet in Residence in 1998 and stayed for thirteen years. Violist Beth Oakes became director of the University of Iowa String Quartet Residency Program, bringing nationally renowned ensembles to Iowa City to work with students and delight audiences.
Audio excerpt: Concerto in A minor for String Quartet, op. 131 / Louis Spohr
Following the 2008 flood of the Iowa River, the School of Music scrambled to find performance venues for the Fall semester. The Chamber Orchestra landed in MacBride Hall Auditorium in November for a double bill of Haydn’s Symphony in Eb Major, No. 103 “Drum Roll” and this three movement concerto for string quartet by Spohr – listen to the Allegro moderato opening movement below.
Iowa Brass Quintet
The Iowa Brass Quintet has been providing an aural counterpart to faculty and resident string ensembles since 1963. Members have included faculty musicians Paul Anderson, Kristen Thelander, and Jeff Agrell (horn); John Beer, David Greenhoe, and Amy Schendel (Trumpet); John Hill, George Krem, and David Gier (trombone); Robert Yeats and John Manning (tuba), along with a variety of graduate students and local brass players stepping in on second trumpet to complete the ensemble.
Audio excerpt: Quartet No. 2, op. 29 / Wilhelm Ramsøe
This work rounded out a recital in 2014 when the ensemble included Amy Schendel and Laura Saylor (trumpet); Jeff Agrell (horn); Dave Gier and Jonathan Allen (trombone); and John Manning (tuba). This is a rather early brass quintet, and one of five composed by Ramsøe, who was himself a violist. This movement is the Minuetto.
Iowa Woodwind Quintet
The Iowa Woodwind Quintet officially launched in 1964, though like the brass quintet, faculty quintet playing preceded a formal ensemble. Long-time members included Betty Bang Mather, Tamara Thweatt, and Nicole Esposito (flute); James Lakin, Mark Weiger, and Andy Parker (oboe); Thomas Ayres and Maurita Murphy Mead (clarinet); Paul Anderson, Kristin Thelander, and Jeffrey Agrell (horn); Ronald Tyree and Benjamin Coelho (bassoon).
Audio excerpt: Suite for Winds No. 1, Op. 57 / Charles Lefebvre
A popular work for woodwind quintet, this recording of the Suite for Winds by Lefebrve was performed on a 1991 recital featuring Betty Bang Mather (flute), Mark Weiger (oboe), Maurita Murphy Mead (clarinet), Ronald Tyree (bassoon), and Kristin Thelander (horn).
The Rita Benton Music Library is excited to have students and faculty return to campus to use the scores, books, recordings, journals, and other resources available in our stacks. It can be tricky to navigate the Music Library for the first…or twentieth…time, so every year our resident mascot Wulfie Parsons writes up his favorite tips and tricks so patrons can have the best experience possible when using the library.
Go for a walk in the stacks.
Wulfie likes to go for a stroll throughout the library. It reminds him where things are located, he likes to look at the covers of the new magazine issues by the west window, and he always takes a moment to howl under the Chihuly sculpture by the south window.
Taking a walk through the stacks can help you figure for where the scores are located, how to find biographies of your favorite composer or performer in the books, and a chance to try out the push-button compact shelving at the very back of the library. Don’t worry, the shelves can’t close on you while browsing the collection, though we can’t comment on if that’s why Wulfie has such a short tail. 🙁
Grab a Call Number Cheat Sheet.
Whatever your voice or instrument, the Music Library has a short cheat sheet of call numbers to help you browse in the stacks. For example, if you’re a trombone player, it will show you that Solos are in M90-94 while Methods Books are in MT 460-472.
The Cheat Sheets are available in the Lobby area of the Music Library, just to your right after entering. You can also find them on the multiple voice and instrument guides on the Music Library’s website. Strings | Woodwinds | Brass | Percussion | Piano and Organ (coming soon) | Voice
Lost? Ask for help!
Even a stroll through the stacks won’t unlock all the Music Library’s secrets. Sometimes, you might need help finding a score or have questions about accessing a library database, or want recommendations of where to look for books on a topic or scores for a certain ensemble. The friendly student workers and full-time staff at the Music Library are here to help, so head over to the Service Desk and ask for assistance. If you need help with your research and would like to talk to our Music Librarian, Katie Buehner, you can schedule a time to meet with her on Zoom or in person, or you can email her your questions.
Take that phone call in the hall.
Please do not hold Zoom and other video or audio phone calls in the Music Library. The Library is one of the few quiet spaces in Voxman, and students seem to prefer it that way. If you need to hold a video or audio phone call, there are many other spaces in Voxman that are less disruptive to others and their studies.
If you are studying in the Music Library and receive a call, please step into the hallway to answer it.
Treats, not meals.
Wulfie’s a big fan of treats, like biscuits and pig’s ears. But he saves messy things, like wet food, for eating outside of the Music Library. Please feel free to bring snacks, like granola bars or a cup of coffee (with a lid), into the Music Library, but please eat meals, like Panchero’s burritos or pizza in the Student Lounge one floor below. There are trash and recycling bins located at the library entrance and near the printers where you can dispose of empty containers and other food-related debris. And you can always bring Wulfie a treat, he’s particularly fond of chicken bits.
Don’t be alarmed by the Computer Lab.
If the Library is open, please enter the adjacent Computer Lab THROUGH THE LIBRARY. If you try to enter or exit from the hallway, a very loud alarm will sound. When the Library is closed, you can swipe into the Computer Lab from the Hallway using your Iowa One Card.If you accidentally trigger the alarm, library staff can turn it off.
We usually don’t need to be told, it’s loud enough that we’ll come running…while Wulfie howls along.
Check out – or help us populate – Wulfie’s Instagram!
Wulfie likes to share his library adventures with friends online, and you can find his feed @wulfieparsons on Instagram. If you take a selfie with Wulfie, tag him! And he always appreciates a scritch between the ears, it can be good luck before a test or a jury.
This Fall, come to the Voxman Music Building for BAND 141, a look at the Hawkeye Marching Band. Director Eric Bush donated a significant collection of materials from the Band’s history including photographs, drill charts, papers, scrapbooks, uniform pieces, audio and video recordings, and other memorabilia to the Rita Benton Music Library in 2020. The exhibit draws from these donated materials, as well as several other collections held in University Archives such as the UI Yearbooks, Charles B. Righter Papers, Scottish Highlander Records, and the Daily Iowan archives.
The exhibit opened September 3. Start your visit on the first floor by the School of Music offices where you can explore the band’s history through its thirteen directors, core song list, innovative formations, and wide ranging uniforms. The exhibit continues on the second floor alongside the Recital Hall, highlighting the Band’s drum majors, alumni, the Golden Girl, and Scottish Highlanders. And lastly, keep your eye online for certain exhibit pieces either on the HMB’s social media feeds or the Music Library’s website.
Discovering lost pieces of music in dusty archives is what most people think musicologists do. We only make the news if someone finds an unknown manuscript by a famous composer buried in a library. It’s true that the most rewarding part of my job is getting to hold centuries-old letters, scores, and concert programs in my hands and to imagine their earlier lives. But “dusty archives”? No, thanks to the Rita Benton Music Library’s digitization of rare scores, I made my biggest discovery on the internet: a volume of sonatas that may have belonged to the family of the novelist Jane Austen.
This story starts a few years back when George McTyre, a doctoral voice student, took me out for coffee. He had one more music history requirement, and he wanted me to offer an interesting class. By the time I’d finished my cappuccino, I’d agreed to teach “Music in the World of Jane Austen.” Designing the course was not exactly a challenge for me. I confess that I’m a “Janeite”—I’ve read all of Austen’s novels multiple times, have seen the movie adaptations, and own a plastic Austen action figure. I even have the voice of Mr. Darcy greeting callers on my cell phone.
In addition to being a writer, Austen was an amateur pianist who practiced every morning before breakfast. The music manuscripts she copied by hand survive, as do many published pieces that belonged to her and to other women in her family circle. These compositions became my class’s “textbook,” as students learned about music making in England during Austen’s lifetime. The Rita Benton Music Library owns many eighteenth-century scores similar to those the writer might have played. When we moved into the Voxman Music Building in 2016, I decided to offer a class based entirely on rare materials in the Library’s Arthur and Miriam Canter Rare Book Room. Featured prominently would be the extensive collection of historic scores by composer Ignaz Pleyel (1757-1831). The compositions of Pleyel, a contemporary of Franz Joseph Haydn, were popular throughout Europe. Rita Benton was the leading scholar of his music, and the Music Library’s Pleyel collection is unparalleled.
Late one night I was perusing the virtual Pleyel scores available online through the Iowa Digital Library. I found a set of six sonatas bound in a volume labeled “Miss Austen.” I emailed librarian Katie Buehner and joked about my “discovery.” But then I looked more closely. Iowa’s sonatas have penciled-in fingerings that resemble the fingerings in another copy of Pleyel’s sonatas, this one owned by Jane Austen’s sister-in-law, Elizabeth Knight. Here things get a little complicated. Elizabeth was the wife of Edward Austen. Edward had been adopted by the wealthy Knights, and he later changed his own family’s name when he received his inheritance. Thus his wife was “Mrs. Austen” or “Mrs. Knight,” never “Miss Austen,” so it’s not clear that Iowa’s Pleyel sonatas could have belonged to her. Another possible owner of the sonatas is Elizabeth’s daughter, Fanny Austen, Jane’s favorite niece, who played the piano very well. Of course, one cannot help but wonder if the volume ever found its way to Jane’s sister, Miss Cassandra Austen or to Jane herself.
I’ve explored the possibilities for the provenance of Iowa’s Pleyel Sonatas in an article for Fontes artis musicae, the journal of the International Association of Music Libraries. I wish I could say I have positive proof that an Austen performed from this particular score. Unfortunately, the complete origins of the “Miss Austen” volume remain a mystery. Still, we can imagine that while taking a break from working on Pride and Prejudice or Emma, Jane Austen enjoyed a rendition of a Pleyel Sonata performed by her talented niece or sat down at the pianoforte and played from the score herself.
About the Author
Marian Wilson Kimber is Professor of Musicology in the School of Music. She has published numerous articles about Felix Mendelssohn, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and spoken recitation in concert life. Her book, The Elocutionists: Women, Music, and the Spoken Word (University of Illinois Press, 2017) won the H. Earle Johnson Subvention from the Society for American Music. Wilson Kimber is a founding member of the duo, Red Vespa, which performs comic spoken word pieces by women composers.
The Rita Benton Music Library now provides access to BabelScores, an online scores database of over 210,000 pages of contemporary music. The catalog features composers from around the world, related media (videos of performances, sound recordings), and methods for contacting composers. This resource was recommended to the Music Library by School of Music composer Sivan Cohen Elias, who is familiar with the platform because her music is available there. If you would like to provide feedback on this resource to the Music Library, please contact music librarian Katie Buehner.
2019 was a busy year for the Rita Benton Music Library at the University of Iowa.
Here are a few highlights!
January
Student from Dr. Suhadolnik’s Fall 2018 American Music seminar mounted the exhibit, “Exploring Our Sounds: Traditions of American Music Making at the University of Iowa.” The exhibit stayed up through August 2019 and examined curriculums, student musical life, and composers. Learn more >
February
The Library was at the School of Music’s Audition Day, connecting with potential students and chatting with current ones. Button making was on the menu again, this time featuring photos of UI students with their instruments or singing in opera or chorus – and of course, imprinted with library call numbers!
March
In March, the Library was at the School’s Donor Appreciation Concert talking about the School of Music Recordings Archives with alumni and donors. We had old concert and recital programs dating back to the 19th century, as well as demos of the digital archiving of recordings, both audio and video. Learn more >
April
In April, Alan and Ann January donated over 150 wax cylinders and a gramophone player to the Music Library. In May, we found out that 13 of the cylinders were one-0f-a-kind early Czech music recordings made in the United States by jeweler Eduard Jedlička. Learn more >
May
May was momentous, as the Music Library helped local musician and donor Carey Bostian begin the process of transferring the James Dixon Papers to the University’s archives. Three van loads later, and the Library’s Seminar Room was FULL with the over 2,000 scores and 30 boxes of papers belonging to Dixon and his mentor, Greek conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos. The rest of the summer was spent sorting the score collection in preparation for preservation and exhibition.
June
In June, Library Assistant Christine Burke and her ensemble performed one of her compositions in [ramp] fest, a concert sponsored by the UI Stanley Museum of Art in the Tower Parking Garage. Christine’s works have been performed this year in Los Angeles, Chicago, Columbus (OH), Pittsburgh, and of course, Iowa City! One of the performers in the ensemble was student worker and Bentz Scholarship winner, Alex Spenceri. Learn more >
July
In July, the Music Library welcomed new School of Music director Tammie Walker to Voxman! Learn more >
August
In August, the Music Library moved over 10,000 LPs to the Libraries Annex facility. An additional 2,000+ titles were withdrawn (duplicate with online or CD content). Around 3,000 titles remain in the Music Library; mostly jazz, UI recordings, saxophone literature (supporting the Iowa Saxophone Archive), and other unusual or semi-rare items. Annex LPs are still available to patrons via request in InfoHawk+/Aeon. The relocation of the LPs provided the Music Library with much needed processing and storage space.
September
In honor of his receiving two awards from area organizations this fall, the Music Library mounted an exhibit of materials about world-renowned bass-baritone and Iowa graduate, Simon Estes. Dr. Amy McBeth curated the display which reviewed his time as a student, his exceptional career, and his philanthropic work.
The Libraries installed a second overhead scanner, this time in the adjacent ITC. Now students can scan materials when the Library is closed, but the ITC is open. This purchase was suggested by Library Assistant Amy McBeth and supported by Library Administration.
October
The Music Library took 16 brown wax cylinders to the Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative at Indiana University to be digitized. Two of the cylinders turned out to have been made in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Librarian Katie Buehner and Czech audio archivist Filip Šír will present about the cylinders at the 2020 International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centres (IAML) meeting in Prague. More news about the Jedlička Czech cylinders will be forthcoming in 2020.
November
The inaugural Benton Student Worker Scholarships were awarded to senior public policy major Olivia Waller and junior music major Anastasia Scholze. These two scholarships were made possible by generous donations from Raymond and Daniel Benton.
A new exhibit case arrived at the Music Library that will be used to display items from the Canter Rare Book Room. Thanks to Daniel Benton and Library Administration for supporting this purchase.
The Music Library was on hand with a pop-up library to accompany a performance by pianist Sarah Cahill of her show “The Future is Female.” Scores by the performed composers were available for check out, and the button maker was busy (again) creating buttons featuring the composers.
Music Librarian Katie Buehner traveled to New York to deliver items from the James Dixon papers for use in the NY Philharmonic Archives exhibit, “Dimitri Mitropoulos’ Music Library,” in Lincoln Center’s Bruno Walter Gallery. The exhibit is open through February 1, 2020. Learn more >
December
Every semester, the UI Catering hosts “Lunch with the Chefs,” which is a “pop-up lunch” based around a theme. This fall’s theme, “The Beatles – Come Together!” was a perfect match for the Music Library’s collections. Working with UI Special Collections, the RBML created a pop-up exhibit of vinyl records, books, and other materials drawn from Donna Parsons‘ excellent Beatles collection. The whole exhibit was staged in a fake teenager’s room, complete with posters, magazine, bean bag chair, a turntable, and OF COURSE Wulfie Parsons! Learn more >
In response to student feedback, the Music Library utilized the Seminar Room as a Music Graduate Student Lounge during Finals Week. Students (and Wulfie) seemed to enjoy having a space all their own, where they could concentrate and have ready access to caffeine, which means we’ll do it again this coming Spring. Learn more>
On November 21, the New York Philharmonic Archives opened a new exhibit about Greek conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896-1960) in the Bruno Walter Gallery at Lincoln Center. The exhibit focuses on Mitropoulos’ tenure as music director of the Philharmonic (1949-1958), but also explores major themes of his overall career. Exhibit items include correspondence, photographs, and many scores drawn from the Philharmonic’s Archives and the conductor’s personal music library, which resides in Iowa City. This significant score library and related documents will soon be added to the collections of the University of Iowa’s Rita Benton Music Library; a destination best explained via a generational narrative involving Mitropoulos, Iowa native James Dixon (1929-2007), and UI alumnus Carey Bostian.
Dimitri Mitropoulos: from Greece to New York
Mitropoulos began his musical career in Greece as a concert pianist, composer, and conductor of various conservatory orchestras in Athens. However, it was in the early thirties that Mitropoulos made a splash in Berlin and Paris with Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, in which he served as both soloist and conductor, leading the orchestra from the piano. In 1936, he made his American debut with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and in 1938, was named music director of the Minneapolis Symphony (now the Minnesota Symphony). It was during this time that Mitropoulos encountered a young James Dixon, who attended the Symphony’s touring performances in Iowa and eventually approached its conductor, seeking guidance. Mitropoulos became a mentor and benefactor for Dixon throughout his formative musical training at the University of Iowa during the 1950s. By this time, Mitropoulos was no longer in the Twin Cities. Many guest conducting appearances with the New York Philharmonic throughout the 1940s led to a co-appointment as music director (along with Leopold Stokowski) in 1949-50, and sole directorship of the ensemble from 1950-1957.
Mitropoulos’ Library: from New York to Iowa
Mitropoulos’ time in New York included over 50 world and 30 American premieres, including works by Schoenberg, Milhaud, Sessions, and even University of Iowa composition professor Philip Bezanson. His relationship with the Philharmonic became increasingly strained, and in 1957-58, he shared the directorship with the conductor who would replace him – Leonard Bernstein. In 1960, Mitropoulos died in Milan while conducting a rehearsal of Mahler’s Third Symphony at La Scala. James Dixon, who at the time was working at the New England Conservatory, inherited his score library, papers, batons, and many religious icons. When Dixon returned to the University of Iowa in 1962 as a professor, the library came to Iowa City. Over the next thirty-five years the Dixon/Mitropoulos score library grew to include almost 2,000 items, ranging from miniature study scores to full sets of orchestral parts. Much like his mentor, Dixon was a champion of contemporary music throughout his career, both in his programming for the UI Symphony Orchestra and collaborations with the UI’s Center for New Music. The library contains many unusual or rare editions of works, many sent to the two conductors by publishers and composers hoping for a premiere performance. Of equal value are the conductor’s markings to be found in many of the scores, especially from premieres, where the conductors worked with composers to fine-tune the work before it was heard in public or sent to press. Mitropoulos was renowned for his phenomenal memory and ability to conduct without the score, both in rehearsal and performance. Markings in his scores reveal clues to his memorization techniques, including numbering maps that allowed him to recollect rehearsal numbers.
The Dixon/Mitropoulos Library: from private collection to public archive and exhibition
Following Dixon’s death in 2007, the library was inherited by Dr. Carey H. Bostian II, a cellist and conductor who was one of Dixon’s last students at the UI. Bostian worked to organize the collection and created an inventory and became yet another contributor to its content. Four years later, the New York Philharmonic launched the Leon Levy Digital Archives, which now includes over 3000 digitized scores, 36,000 orchestral parts, 14,000 programs, and over 50,000 images and photographs. Included in the Archives is Mitropoulos’ score of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony (which the conductor premiered in the United States with the Philharmonic in 1947), loaned to the Philharmonic by Dr. Bostian for digitization. This single score loan led to a collaboration between Bostian, the Philharmonic Archives, and the Rita Benton Music Library (e.g., the Mitropoulos exhibit in Lincoln Center).
In July 2019, Bostian began the process of donating James Dixon’s papers to the Rita Benton Music Library at the University of Iowa, which include the Mitropoulos music library. The Philharmonic’s Director of Archives and Exhibitions Gabryel Smith visited the collection in August, both to review items for exhibition, but also to discuss digitization of Mitropoulos’s marked scores for inclusion in the Leon Levy Digital Archives. This partnership will allow seamless access to the scores within a robust digital archive of orchestral music and performance data, allowing researchers to explore Mitropoulos’ career and musicianship more fully.
There will be more news about the James Dixon Papers in future months, but for those interested in exploring Mitropoulos’ library now, a marvelous sneak peek (thanks to archivists Sarah Palmero and Gabe Smith) is available at Lincoln Center for your consideration. Here in Iowa City, the Music Library will continue to unpack and prepare this large and fascinating collection for processing.
Visit the Exhibit
Dimitri Mitropoulos’ Music Library
Curated by Sarah Palmero (Assistant Archivist) and Gabryel Smith (Director, Archives and Exhibitions), New York Philharmonic Archives Bruno Walter Gallery | David Geffen Hall Lincoln Center, New York City
Open through February 1, 2019
Explore the New York Philharmonic’s Leon Levy Digital Archives
One of the problems of being a film historian is that you sometimes stumble across movies that require immediate love and attention. Four Daughters is one such film for me.
Falling short of “classic” status, this sentimental family drama fared more than well when it was released in 1938. The film’s adamant normalcy—a happy, middle-class family ensconced in a suburb untouched by the Great Depression—appealed to audiences. Its impressive popularity at the box office compelled Warner Bros. to make three more films with the same starring cast: a spinoff, Daughters Courageous (1939), and two sequels titled (spoiler alert) Four Wives (1939) and Four Mothers (1941). Fifteen years later, Warner Bros. would revive the Four Daughters story again for Doris Day and Frank Sinatra, retitling it Young at Heart (1955). Four Daughters also launched the screen career of John Garfield, cast in the unlikely role of an orchestrator. (He was, at least, a cynical, embittered orchestrator—more Garfield’s style.)
Four Daughters has some interesting connections to Iowa and to special collections within the state. I’ve learned about these materials in the process of researching the film’s music, and I’m happy for the opportunity to share these now. They may interest you in the films and the Hollywood history that is preserved in Iowan collections.
Like Little Women, Four Daughters is about four, close-knit sisters: Emma, Thea, Kay, and Ann. Until they find husbands, the young women live with their father, who teaches music at the local conservatory. Days are filled with music, dad jokes, and friendly sparring for the affections of Felix, a young composer at the conservatory. All is sunny until a cranky orchestrator named Mickey arrives, making everything complicated and interesting. For casting, Warner Bros. landed a novelty: Thea, Kay, and Ann are played by actual sisters: Lola, Rosemary, and Priscilla Lane. The Lanes hailed from Indianola, Iowa, and Four Daughters was not their first encounter with show business.
The real name of the Lane family was Mullican, and they had not three daughters but five. Starting with the eldest, there was Leotabel (Leota), Martha, Dorothy (Lola), Rosemary, and Priscilla. Of the bunch, all but Martha performed on the stage professionally. The Mullican family took advantage of their proximity to Simpson College. They boarded students, and the sisters took music lessons at Simpson. Martha even eloped with a professor. (Remarkably, all of these events anticipate plot points in Four Daughters and Four Wives. The resemblances are purely coincidental.)
The older Leota and Lola took to musical theater in the 1920s, playing in revues and shows, where they occasionally sang together as a sister act. Lola eventually went to Hollywood in the late 1920s; Leota soon followed, but struggled to land parts. Meanwhile, Rosemary and Priscilla initiated their own sister act in New York with Fred Waring’s band, The Pennsylvanians. When Waring and the band were cast in the Warner Bros. film Varsity Show (1937), Rosemary and Priscilla received major parts. Contracts from Warner Bros. kept the sisters in California, much to the dismay of Waring, whose sojourn to Tinseltown cost him several key members of his band. Rosemary next joined Lola in Hollywood Hotel (1937), with the sisters receiving second and third billing behind the inconceivably cheerful star, Dick Powell.
Given the four sisters’ film experience, one might logically expect them to join forces in Four Daughters. Hollywood, however, is neither logical nor kind to families. Warner Bros. evidently tested Leota but selected Gale Page as Emma, the eldest sister, for the film. (To her credit, Page handles her tricky role admirably.) How this setback was felt among the Lanes is anyone’s guess, but a brief article from Boxoffice shows Leota didn’t let Hollywood break her or her family.
The article reads:
Leota Lane, who has been visiting Sisters Lola, Rosemary, and Priscilla while they have been making Four Wives for Warner Bros., will present a concert in Indianola, the Lane girls’ home town, Tuesday, December 5.
Leota, the eldest of the Lane girls, was once a stage name with Sister Lola. During the last year she has been studying voice at the Juilliard School of Music.
After Leota’s concert at the Methodist Church, old friends will greet her at a public reception in the Simpson College administration building. (Boxoffice, 2 December 1939)
Tucked in the corner of the regional news section, the article is quietly affecting. I hope her recital went well.
There’s a quirky epilogue concerning the sisters: Although Leota was excluded from Four Daughters and the three films that followed, she was cast with her siblings in the Lux Theatre radio adaptations of Four Daughters and Four Wives. On the radio waves, at least, she resumed her regular role as eldest daughter. Today, pictures, papers, and memorabilia from the Lane sisters’ careers are preserved in the Mark Felton Collection in the Simpson College Archives.
More Four Daughters material has since made its way to Iowa. The Libraries have two archival scripts from the production. There’s a copy of a revised script, dated 12 February 1938, held among the Robert Blees’ Papers at the University of Iowa’s Special Collections. Robert Blees’ career as a screenwriter took off in the 1940s and 1950s (Magnificent Obsession is among his credits), and it’s not clear that Blees had any connection with Four Daughters. But his employment in the studio’s story department meant he had ready access to scripts, and the version preserved among his papers is a rare transitional document that occasionally diverges from the final shooting script. Comparing Blees’ copy of this revised—but not yet final—script with the film is a little like watching deleted film scenes from more recent titles: the differences show the film’s story to be more flexible and uncertain of itself. The discrepancies allow alternative perspectives on the characters and story to slip in.
Another copy of the film’s script in Special Collections was annotated by a musician directly engaged with the production. Max Rabinowitsch (or “Rabinowitz” or “Rabinowitsh,” as it is sometimes spelled) had been hired to assist with the film’s many scenes of onscreen musicmaking. A professional pianist, Rabinowitsch was known among Los Angeles concertgoers as an exemplary recital accompanist who performed alongside luminaries like Nathan Milstein, Fyodor Chaliapin, and Joseph Achron. (Later, Jascha Heifetz would help set up Rabinowitsch as a private piano teacher to the young and promising André Previn, who went on to write film scores, perform in jazz combos, compose concert music, and enjoy international renown as a conductor.) Rabinowitsch also belonged to a small group of studio pianists who were called upon to make famous stars sound musical. While an actor pantomimed a virtuosic performance at the piano onscreen, the efforts of an actual pianist surged from the theater’s speakers. (Sometimes getting actors to look musical was still a challenge. Hal Wallis, the producer for Four Daughters, complained that the film’s bachelor composer looked more like he was digging a ditch than playing piano.)
Rabinowitsch did more than assist with onscreen music performances. He also wrote an original piece of music. Well, technically, part of a piece. There are two musical works in the film that are “composed” by characters in the story. One piece is by composer Felix, who hires Mickey, the jaded orchestrator, to arrange it. The piece is entered in a competition and, naturally, wins first prize. The other work is by Mickey. He plays a melody on the piano for only one person—Ann, the youngest daughter—and insists that it is not a full composition but “only a middle.” Rabinowitsch wrote that “middle,” and you can hear him performing his own work as Garfield’s arms wander vaguely over the keyboard.
In the film, the orchestrator’s inability to complete his composition is another mark of his inadequacy. For Rabinowitsch, however, this was an unexpected and welcome diversion. Rabinowitsch appears not to have published any compositions before or after this, and in Hollywood he was hired to play piano, not compose. But in this case, Max Steiner, the chief composer of Four Daughters’ background score, took the unusual step of having Rabinowitsch dream up something for the onscreen orchestrator. Rabinowitsch was clearly proud of his contribution. He dedicated his 21-measure piece to “Hula Boy Max Steiner” (a grinning reference to Steiner’s recent Hawaii vacation). And in his annotated copy of the script, for the scene in which Mickey privately shares “his” melody with Ann, Rabinowitsch scrawls “He starts to play my composition.”
You won’t find Rabinowitsch’s name in the screen credits for Four Daughters. Such omissions were common during this era of filmmaking. But another bizarre epilogue rescued Rabinowitsch’s authorship from anonymity. In the sequel Four Wives, the screenwriters decided that Mickey’s “middle” would be magnanimously finished by Felix—a musical role reversal that would culminate in a lengthy concert hall performance. The arrangement of this fictional symphony was largely managed by Max Steiner, but he was arranging Rabinowitsch’s theme, so the film’s screen credits include a rare attribution: “Mickey’s theme by Max Rabinowitsh.” This must be one of the few instances in which a single melody receives its own credit line. Conveniently, the symphony features a lengthy piano solo which was written and performed by Rabinowitsch himself. Rabinowitsch is also the pianist onscreen performing among the ranks of the orchestra—finally seen as well as heard.
The scripts from Four Daughters represent a sliver of an iceberg’s worth of film-related material preserved in the Special Collections. There are thousands of documents, including scripts, production materials, correspondences, music, fan ephemera, and (naturally) much more. An overview of these contents is available here. For those interested in watching any of the Four Daughters films or the 1955 Young at Heart remake, DVDs of the titles are held in the library’s collection.
Recommended Further Readings
For more on the Lane Sisters, see these profiles from the Des Moines Register:
For more on Four Daughters, see Catherine Jurca, Hollywood 1938: Motion Pictures’ Greatest Year (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 139–150; and Jennifer Forrest, “Of `True’ Sequels: The Four Daughters Movies, or the Series That Wasn’t,” in Second Takes: Critical Approaches to the Film Sequel, eds. Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Constantine Verevis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), 31-44.
A special thanks to librarian Cynthia Dyer of Simpson College, the staff of the University of Iowa’s Special Collections, and music librarian Katie Buehner, without whom this work would not have been possible.
About the Author
Nathan Platte is an associate professor of musicology in School of Music with an affiliated appointment in the Department of Cinematic Arts. His most recent book, Making Music in Selznick’s Hollywood (Oxford University Press, 2018), explores films like Gone With the Wind, Since You Went Away, and Spellbound. Nathan’s research on the Four Daughters films is featured in the forthcoming anthology, Voicing the Cinema (University of Illinois Press).
In 1923, department chair Philip Greeley Clapp established graduate studies in music at the University of Iowa, and in 1924/25, the first students concluded their course of study with the submission of musical compositions and documents as theses. Over the last 95 years, Iowa graduates have submitted musical works, performing and critical editions, historical and theoretical studies, arrangements and transcriptions, bibliographies, and most recently, audio recordings as thesis as the capstone project of their master’s or doctoral degree in music at the University of Iowa.
This exhibit invites you to explore the breadth and depth of Iowa music theses, both in substance and style. Objects on display will rotate periodically and will be organized around different themes, such as theses about music in Iowa and the UI School of Music, prize winning projects, compositions, recordings, and more.
Two compositions were submitted for thesis in the summer of 1925; Pandora by Marian Edman and Smoke and Steel by Anna Margaret Starbuck. The latter was daughter of piano and organ professor, Anna Diller Starbuck, who figures prominently in the correspondence of music department chair, P. G. Clapp.
Clapp wrote in a letter to his wife, “Margaret Starbuck is finding, to her surprise and consternation, that finishing her score is a big job. She is keeping at it – now! – and will, I think, finish her work, especially as I have a notion (which naturally I am not publishing) that I can get her a time extension of about three days at the end, if necessary; but her parents are clearly worried, and are starting a prophylactic rumor that I could excuse her from finishing if I were decent and chose.”
In the end, Margaret completed the project on time and graduated as a Master of Music. Her composition, Smoke and Steel, was inspired by the Carl Sandburg poem of the same name.
Early theses compositions were handwritten manuscripts written in ink, so Margaret’s struggles to complete her project are understandable. A close look at her score reveals the underlying pencil marks, and in several places, she had to scrape away the paper to remove mistakes.
The first written music thesis analyzed Debussy’s Arabesque No. 2 and Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, charting the cadences with observance to their function and effect. Camp’s project may seem mundane, but consider that Debussy died only six years before the thesis was written and his music still relatively new (though the works studied were more than twenty years old).
The thesis shows the limitations of typewriters in handling musical needs, for Camp found it necessary to write in sharps, flats, and intervals. This may be why Camp included no musical examples in the thesis – only measure numbers. Subsequent thesis writers pasted or taped handwritten examples into their documents.
Following graduation, Camp moved to Arizona, where a census record lists her as a teacher at the state university. She married Cecil Clampitt in 1930 and died at the age of 87 in Tuscon.
Lasocki went on to publish numerous performing editions of flute and recorder repertoire. His book, The Recorder: a research and information guide, is in its third edition. He also co-published several performance guides with Iowa’s emeritus flute professor Betty Bang Mather.
Lasocki worked as a reference librarian at the William and Gayle Cook Music Library at Indiana University, Bloomington for many years. In retirement, he still researches and writes about historical performance and the recorder.
Männerchors, or male singing societies, were active in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century, though most folded following the world wars. While several studies had examined specific männerchor or focused on a defined region, Snyder’s thesis endeavored to “explore the Männerchor from both the local and regional view, and much attention…given to the Sängerfests of regional federations…These festivals significantly influenced the musical climate of the times, and let to the establishment of music festivals across the United States, many of which are in still in existence today.”
In her acknowledgements, Snyder credits UI musicologist Dr. Fred Crane for “interesting me in a topic that has been fascinating and immensely rewarding.” Crane’s personal collection of musical Iowana informed sections of Snyder’s study [see medallion left].
Snyder’s dissertation received the Rita Benton Dissertation Award. She continued writing about männerchor, including a chapter about sängerfests in Indianapolis for the book Music and culture in America, 1861-1918 (Garland, 1998).
Week Three: University of Iowa School of Music Histories
As the author of this thesis notes, “The Hawkeye Marching Band is the most visible ensemble in the School of Music, and it is one of the largest student groups at the University…” In fact, marching bands at the University pre-date the formation of the School of Music, having started in 1881 with the University Battalion Band (six cornets, two alto horns, two tenor horns, one baritone, two basses, tenor and bass drums, and cymbals), and was part of the Military Department.
Biggers’s study is a rich mix of oral and documented history. University yearbooks, other historical studies on musical activities at Iowa, departmental records, local newspapers (including The Daily Iowan), photographs, drill charts, and business papers all served to inform this document.
The appendices are also of note, because Biggers collated lists of drum majors, student leaders, work crews, librarians, twirlers, band announcers, recordings, trophy recipients, and staff.