Katie Buehner – Rita Benton Music Library Blog

Sep 24 2019

SOUNDS FROM THE FIELD – Hearing Hollywood in Iowa’s Special Collections: Casting and Composing for the Four Daughters films

Posted on September 24, 2019September 30, 2019 by Katie Buehner

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.)

Advertisements from Variety October 27 1926 — In this advertisement printed in Variety, October 27, 1926, Leota and Lola are billed above Ray Bolger, who in 1939 would be cast as the Scarecrow in MGM’s The Wizard of Oz. Courtesy of the open-access Media History Digital Library.

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.)

Priscilla and Rosemary Lane photograph in Radio Digest June 1933 — Priscilla and Rosemary Lane are featured here as the singers for Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians. This picture was published in Radio Digest, June 1933. Courtesy of the open- access Media History Digital Library.

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.)

Fig 4_Four Daughters_Rabinowitsch_My composition — Excerpt from Max Rabinowitsch’s annotated script. When Ann is “struck by the music,” Rabinowitsch writes “he starts to play my composition after ‘at least smiled.’” (His words are written out of order.) Image courtesy of Special Collections, the University of Iowa Libraries.

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.

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).

Sep 12 2019

EXHIBIT: 95 [YEARS OF] THESES

Posted on September 12, 2019September 30, 2019 by Katie Buehner

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.

Week One: Early Theses

cover page of Smoke and Steel by Anna Starbuck Starbuck, Anna Margaret. “Smoke and steel ; a symphonic poem.” Master’s thesis, University of Iowa, 1925.

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.

page 38 of Debussy thesis by Audrey Camp Camp, Audrey Beryl. “An analysis of cadential progressions in selected compositions of Claude Achille Debussy.” Master’s thesis, University of Iowa, 1924.

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.

Week Two: Award Winning Theses

title page of lasocki thesis Lasocki, David Ronald Graham. “Professional recorder players in England, 1540-1740.” PhD diss., University of Iowa, 1983.

The D.C. Spriestersbach Dissertation Prize was established to recognize excellence in doctoral research. Each year, a winner of the D.C. Spriestersbach Dissertation Prize is eligible to become the University of Iowa’s nominee in the national competition for the Council of Graduate Schools/University Microfilms International Distinguished Dissertation Award. In 1984, David Lasocki became the first of five Hawkeyes to receive the Spriesterbach and the International Distinguished Dissertation Award.

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.

page 212 from snyder thesis Snyder, Suzanne Gail. “The Männerchor tradition in the United States : a historical analysis of its contribution to American musical culture.” PhD diss., University of Iowa, 1991.

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

image of old capitol dome marching band formation from thesis Biggers, Samuel Carter., Jr. “On Iowa! a history of The University of Iowa Marching Band, 1881-2012.” DMA diss., University of Iowa, 2012. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/2439/.

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.

Aug 22 2019

Wulfie Parsons Music Library Guide: 2019 Edition

Posted on August 22, 2019September 12, 2019 by Katie Buehner

In the summer of 2018, the Rita Benton Music Library “adopted” Wülfie Parsons, who belonged previously to Dr. Donna Parsons.
He’s always on the prowl near the Service Desk, decked out in his Hawkeye black and gold kerchief, keeping the Music Library in tip-top shape.

Wülfie’s seen a lot happen at the Music Library during his first year, and here are some tips he has for new and returning students, faculty and staff at the start of the 2019 academic year.

1. Consult the expertise of our excellent student workers

The Music Library hires 10-15 student workers each year who spend their time processing new items, sewing scores into those blue binders, re-shelving books, scores, and recordings, and answering your questions about how the library works and what to do when something goes awry. They are well-trained by the full-time staff members, and know the stacks inside and out. They can also help when the printers run out of ink, the scanners are acting strangely, and if you need to find a stapler. Wülfie would also like everyone to know they give the best ear scritches.

2. Recycle! Trash and recycling bins are located at the front entrance.

Trying to figure out what to do with scrap paper, empty beverage containers, and other recyclables that need to be disposed of while in the Library? There’s a recycling bin right next to the security gates at the entrance to the Library. If you realize you need a regular trash receptacle, you can use the can next to the in-library printer or the one next to the recycling bin.

3. Be respectful of fellow patrons and take voice and video calls outside of the Library.

There are times when you may need to speak to someone on the phone or video chat with them during your time at the Library. Please realize that the Library is viewed as a quiet-ish space, designed to allow students to focus on their work. Loud and even whispered conversations can cause anxiety for others and disrupt their concentration.

We’ve had a few times in the last year where patrons also found the level of noise coming from the Library workroom to be disruptive. The Library full-time and student staff can sometimes be louder than they realize (including the librarian), so if we are being disruptive, please let us know! We will pipe down. That includes Wülfie, who has a bad habit of practicing his howling techniques at odd hours.

4. Bring snacks! Bring coffee! Eat full or hot meals in other spaces.

Wülfie can tell you, the Music Librarian loves coffee, and every musician knows how important it is to stay hydrated. Bring beverages into the library, but please bring them inside a container with a lid.

Snacks, like granola bars or fruit or cookies, are also welcome. If you plan to eat a hot meal, like a re-heated frozen dinner or pizza or foods that make a fair amount of noise or odor, please find another place in Voxman to eat. The downstairs lounge, which has a fridge, microwave, sink, and is without carpet, makes a far more amenable place for eating meals. Crumbs and spills can damage library items, or attract creatures to the stacks.

If you bring a dog biscuit for Wülfie, that’s totally OK, too. In fact, it is encouraged.

5. Follow the University Tobacco-Free Campus Policy. No smoking, including vaping, in the Library.

Wülfie doesn’t have much to add to this item, except to say that if you need to review the University’s Tobacco-Free Campus policy, it’s available here.

Apr 02 2019

SOUNDS FROM THE FIELD – Anthony Burgess in Iowa City: How Clockwork Orange’s Author Came to Write a Symphony for the University of Iowa

Posted on April 2, 2019May 2, 2019 by Katie Buehner

by Nathan Platte

The English novelist Anthony Burgess visited Iowa City in 1975 to teach at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. His course received endorsement in the “Letters to the Editor” section of the Daily Iowan. “I would like to thank the Iowa English Department for arranging such a unique class as Problems of the Modern Novel and for arranging to have Mr. Anthony Burgess teach this subject,” wrote Kevin Cookie. “I can honestly say that Anthony Burgess did present in fine form a considerable number of problems.”

In a move that distinguished him from other visiting writers, Burgess brought with him a new symphony. He had written it specially for James Dixon and the University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra.

Explained Burgess:

I’d had a long-standing invitation to visit the University of Iowa, internationally known for, among other things, its Writers’ Workshop, but something always got in the way of acceptance. Then I received a letter from Jim Dixon—not the hero of Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim but the conductor of the University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra—asking me if I had anything in stock, musical of course not literary, that the orchestra might perform when, if, I came there. This seemed too good to be true. Neglect of my music by the orchestra of the Old World was what mainly turned me into a novelist, but most of this music had by now been blitzed, lost, torn up, and I had nothing in stock. So just before last Christmas I bought myself a half-hundredweight of scoring paper and starting writing a symphony.

Composition of the “Symphony in C” began in Italy, around Christmas of 1974. Burgess conceded that some passages were composed under the influence of “Christmas bibulosity,” though “the writing seems sober enough.” The rest was penned during a tour of the United States, with Burgess laboring mightily midst airport muzak. “Do the people responsible for this bland abomination,” mused Burgess, “realize that there are people around desperately trying to compose music of their own?”

When Mr. Dixon brought the work before the orchestra, Burgess responded with delight: “I attended the first rehearsal and was awed at the large competence of all those delectable kids in blue jeans…I had written over 30 books, but this was the truly great artistic moment.” It wasn’t all perfect, of course. Some of what Burgess had written needed fixing. Plus, “young people do not take kindly to pianissimo markings: they like to saw or blast away.”

Not all the blue-jeaned musicians were exactly kids. The bass section included Laird Addis, who had received his bachelors and Ph.D. degrees from UI and was serving as a philosophy professor. (In addition to his forty-year tenure as a UI faculty member, Laird spent decades playing in the Quad City Symphony and cofounded the Iowa City Community String Orchestra. His passing in 2018 is keenly felt.) The violin section was helped by the presence of Candace Wiebener, another UI alumna who was by then already serving as City High School’s Director of Orchestras. (She retired in 2012 and is active in the local music scene; she also plays in the Iowa City Community String Orchestra.) Googling the names of other musicians from the program produces a vivid illustration of what happens to young musicians who train intensively together and then disperse across the country: they teach, perform, and grow musical communities.

concert program symphony orchestra october 22 1975 — Program from the October 22, 1975 UI Symphony Orchestra concert

In A Clockwork Counterpoint, Paul Phillips begins his study of Burgess’s music and music-infused writings with the Iowa City premiere of the symphony. His reason is simple: the concert affirmed within Burgess his calling to write music. This was no mere pat on the back; it was a rebalancing of the soul. Phillips notes that “unlike Paul Bowles and Bruce Montgomery, who compartmentalized writing and composing as independent activities, Burgess constantly sought ways to unite both halves of his creative personality.” It was not always easy, as demand for Burgess’s writings far outstripped interest in his many–over 250–compositions. It is telling, for instance, that Burgess compared his own exasperation over A Clockwork Orange’s rampant notoriety to a composer’s plight: Rachmaninoff, who came to begrudge audiences’ obsession with his Prelude in C# Minor. Upon hearing the UI Symphony Orchestra play his own opus, Burgess realized that Iowa City was that rare space where his talents as writer and composer might be appreciated together, where the problems of the modern novel might coexist peaceably with a new symphony: “how blessed the opportunity, however brief, to communicate without preaching, without being groused at for delivering no or the wrong message—to communicate in pure sound, form, pattern.”

Burgess left the manuscript score of his symphony—inscribed affectionately to James Dixon–with the university, where it is kept in the Canter Rare Book Room of the Rita Benton Music Library. Whatever distractions the Christmas celebrations and airport muzak posed, they have left relatively few signs of distress in the score itself, which is written neatly in ink. At one point Burgess lost or emptied his black pen, forcing an abrupt to switch to blue ink in the middle of the first movement. There are also some irreverent remarks printed in Arabic. Evidently proud of these idiosyncratic improprieties, Burgess referenced them in multiple commentaries on the symphony.

As a whole, the symphony exudes an affable eclecticism of styles, somewhat akin to the spirit of Leonard Bernstein’s concert works. Also similar to Bernstein, the music’s charismatic appeal to listeners is balanced by substantive challenges for players. No one gets off easy. Large swaths of the work flicker with rapid activity, intense contrasts in orchestral color, and rhythmically intricate handoffs. As a result, players must execute challenging passagework under very exposed circumstances. Burgess may have thought he was writing a symphony, but the players are tasked with a concerto for orchestra.

Given the sheer musical interest—and fun—of the symphony, it is surprising the work is not better known. (The symphony remains unpublished.) Dixon’s own intention to release a professional recording with the UI Symphony is a plan that remains to be realized by a future director.

Even so, Dixon’s invitation to Burgess and the composer’s enthusiastic response call us to reassess our own capacity for versatile creativity—as well as our opportunities to elicit such creativity from others. “It follows,” wrote Burgess, “that all novelists should also be symphonists and that their works should be performed in Iowa City. Good for their souls as well as for their primary craft. And it might also give them a chance to write gratefully about people like Jim Dixon and orchestras like the one he trains and conducts.”

The Story behind the Story

I learned about Burgess’s Iowa Symphony from Theodore Ziolkowski’s Music Into Fiction: Composers Writing, Compositions Imitated, which music librarian Katie Buehner helpfully displayed on the new book shelf. I checked out the book because I liked the title and then placed it carefully alongside other well-titled books in my office. When I finally got around to opening it, I was surprised to find a reference to the symphony’s premiere at UI.

A few searches in the catalog and further correspondences with Katie, Amy McBeth, and Christine Burke led to the printed program for the concert, Burgess’s manuscript score, and the university’s archival recording of the concert itself. Before seeing the score or hearing the recording, I was already hooked by Burgess’s program note, which introduced the symphony to listeners in terms that were alternately engrossing and endearingly self-deprecating. At this point, the story seemed to be taking me by the hand. Being the obliging sort, I followed.

I studied Burgess’s manuscript full score at the staff work table tucked behind the patron counter at the music library. This setup was different from my visits to collections with devoted tables for researchers. In those spaces—such as the University’s Special Collections–researchers are set up with rare materials at a large table and left to commune with their selected sources. Score study of Burgess’s symphony, in contrast, was fit alongside the daily work of student staff. My encounter with Burgess’s music happened amidst the inner workings of the library itself, as students Alex, Anastasia, Ramin, and Shelby bound new music scores, loaded book carts, and helped patrons. I liked being close to these familiar rhythms, which reminded me of working as a student employee at the University of Michigan music library. That early experience of being surrounded by music and music scholarship had helped me find my way; UI’s music library offers similar opportunities today.

And it is not a stretch to imagine Burgess approving as well, knowing that his music for Dixon and the UI Symphony contributes to the curiosity-driven economy of research, by which music-making sustains and is sustained by the efforts of staff and librarians. Burgess would be pleasantly surprised to know that the recording of the premiere has benefited from the library’s care. “The work went on to tape,” he noticed, “to be blurred by the magnetic apparatus used in airport security checks, eventually to be snarled up or to wear out or to be accidentally wiped off.” While nothing material lasts forever, the university’s records of that special Iowa City performance are for now well kept at the Rita Benton Music Library, where ongoing efforts to enliven local history—including historic premieres by our student ensembles—provide current students with means to pursue music studies and designs of their own.

Select Bibliography

Burgess, Anthony. “A Clockwork Orange Resucked (1986).” In A Clockwork Orange. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1962, 1986.
Burgess, Anthony. “How I Wrote My Symphony.” New York Times. 28 December 1975, 73.
Burgess, Anthony. “Symphony in C.” Note published in the University Symphony Orchestra program. 22 October 1975.
Cookie, Kevin. “Burgess as Teacher.” Daily Iowan. 31 October 1975.
Phillips, Paul. A Clockwork Counterpoint: The Music and Literature of Anthony Burgess. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010.
Ziolkowski, Theodore. Music into Fiction: Composers Writing, Compositions Imitated. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2017.

About the Author

Nathan Platte’s research and teaching interests include American film music, opera, collaborative creativity, and musical adaptations across media. He has presented papers at national and international conferences, including the Society for American Music, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, the American Musicological Society, and the British Library. His articles and projects have received recognition from the University of Michigan (Louise E. Cuyler Prize in Musicology), Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (Dissertation Fellowship), the American Musicological Society (Publication Subvention), and Society for American Music (Mark Tucker Award and Wiley Housewright Dissertation Award).

Platte’s publications explore film music of Hollywood’s studio era from a variety of angles, including the collaborative process of film scoring, the intersection of technology and music, the role of studio orchestras, and soundtrack albums. His articles have appeared in many journals, including The Journal of Musicology, 19th-Century Music, and The Journal of the Society for American Music. Platte’s work has also been published in anthologies, including Music in Epic Film: Listening to Spectacle (Routledge, 2017), where he contributed an essay on the Tara theme from Gone With the Wind, and Sound: Dialogue, Music, and Effects (Rutgers University Press, 2015), to which he contributed a chapter on production practices in postwar Hollywood. Platte’s books include The Routledge Film Music Sourcebook (Routledge, 2012; coedited with James Wierzbicki and Colin Roust) and Franz Waxman’s “Rebecca”: A Film Score Guide (Scarecrow Press, 2012; coauthored with David Neumeyer). His most recent book, Making Music in Selznick’s Hollywood (Oxford University Press, 2018), investigates the scores for films like Gone With the Wind, Since You Went Away, and Spellbound.

Platte received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, where he also completed bachelor’s degrees in history and trombone performance. Before joining the faculty at the University of Iowa in 2011, he taught at Michigan and Bowling Green State University.

Mar 26 2019

Students Investigate: A Deeper Dive into H. S. Perkins’s The Nightingale

Posted on March 26, 2019 by Katie Buehner

William Oscar Perkins and Henry Southwick Perkins, The Nightingale: A Choice Collection of Songs, Chants and Hymns, Designed for the Use of Juvenile Classes, Public Schools, and Seminaries; Containing Also a Complete and Concise System of Elementary Instruction (Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1860)

by C. A. Norling

h s perkins the nightingale title page — Title page of Perkins’s *The Nightingale*

Advertised in University catalogues as providing “peculiar advantages to students,” the University of Iowa’s first music courses utilized a repertoire grounded in larger, nineteenth-century trends in American music education and represent the subject’s institutional foundation at the University prior to the establishment of a permanent School of Music.¹ The academic sessions, held annually at the local Normal Academy of Music, were created to “give complete courses of instruction” in music performance, “both vocal and instrumental.”² Written in part by the institution’s founding principal Henry Southwick Perkins, The Nightingale demonstrates a direct connection to the beginnings of American musical education itself. Originating in the eighteenth century, singing schools flourished throughout the United States with the use of simple songs arranged in three or four parts, a method standardized by eminent music educator Lowell Mason of Boston in the 1840s.³ Perkins himself studied under Mason and operated singing schools nationwide and, as such, prefaced his manual with a course of instruction for music beginners.

Beyond its pedagogical contents, The Nightingale features nearly two hundred pages of part-songs composed by prominent American composers that often reflect nationalistic themes. From the patriotic “Hail Columbia” and “Our Country’s Flag” to hymns by Perkins himself, the academy founded its day-to-day music instruction on domestic educational methods and a national repertoire.⁴ Perkins’s own patriotic anthem, “My Native Hills” (shown here), is descriptive of both its American surroundings and democratic ideals when it asserts that “my native hills are thine.” In addressing the goals of the volume, Perkins wrote that the selections are “pleasing and practical in character . . . [and] may contribute largely to the pleasure and education of the rising public,” a testament to egalitarian impulses of the nation’s then-budding public music education.⁵

page from perkins the nightingale song my native land — Note the penciled annotation in the title of this song from Perkins’s *Nightingale*

¹ Catalogue of the State University of Iowa for the Year 1866-67 (Davenport, IA: Lush, Lane & Co., 1866), 47.
² Henry Southwick Perkins, “The Iowa State Normal Academy of Music at Iowa City,” Annals of Iowa 1872, no. 1 (1872): 62.
³ Edward B. Birge, History of Public School Music in the United States (Washington D.C.: Music Educator’s National Conference, 1966), 26.
⁴ Foundational American music historian Oscar Sonneck wrote extensively regarding the origins of “Hail Columbia” and overtly draws ideological associations between the anthem and the “Star Spangled Banner.” Oscar Sonneck, “Critical Notes on the origin of ‘Hail Columbia,’” Sammelbände der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft 3, no. 1 (1901): 139.
⁵ William Oscar Perkins and Henry Southwick Perkins, The Nightingale: A Choice Collection of Songs, Chants and Hymns, Designed for the Use of Juvenile Classes, Public Schools, and Seminaries; Containing Also a Complete and Concise System of Elementary Instruction (Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1860), [3].

About the Author

Cody Norling is a PhD student in historical musicology at the University of Iowa. Apart from his research on American operatic traditions, he maintains research interests Midwestern History and has contributed writing to the Annals of Iowa and a forthcoming volume on nineteenth-century identity formation in the Midwest. Cody is currently the instructor for a course titled “Midwestern Identities” in the University of Iowa’s Department of Rhetoric.

image of philip bezanson, aaron copland, himie voxman, and james dixon

Mar 19 2019

Students Investigate: A Deeper Dive into the SUI concert of Copland compositions, March 5, 1958

Posted on March 19, 2019April 16, 2019 by Katie Buehner

State University of Iowa Orchestra concert of Copland compositions, March 5, 1958
Represented by original concert program and picture of Himie Voxman and Aaron Copland from the composers 1958 visit to Iowa City

by Jenna Sehmann

photograph of copland visiting the university of iowa in 1958 — left to right: Philip Bezanson, Aaron Copland, Himie Voxman, and James Dixon

On March 5, 1958, Aaron Copland attended a concert by the State University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra as an honored guest. Copland’s visit, culminating in this performance, reflected as much upon Copland’s achievements as it did upon the achievements of American Music, and the musical achievements at the University of Iowa.

Copland’s visit to the University was well received by students, faculty, and local residents. Attendance was at full capacity for the Symphony Orchestra concert as well as a lecture Copland gave titled “The Emergence of American Music.” In this lecture, Copland detailed that the “Emergence School of American Music” was “in the running,” implying that American Music could stand up to its European predecessors.¹ This emergence that Copland referenced in his lecture is reflected in his own compositions performed by the SUI Symphony.

At this concert, the orchestra performed three works from a wide range of Copland’s compositional style and time periods: The Suite from the Ballet Billy The Kid, Copland’s Third Symphony, and a concert version of his opera The Tender Land. In a review by Donald Justice, the orchestra was praised for their performance, noting that Billy The Kid and Third Symphony were “two excellent performances.”² The performance of Copland’s rarely performed opera The Tender Land was especially suitable for the composer’s trip to the Midwest. The opera is set on a Midwest farm, making it particularly reflective of the lives and upbringings of many students and community members.³

University of Iowa symphony concert program march 5 1958 — State University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra concert program from March 5, 1958 featuring works by visiting composer, Aaron Copland

¹ “Emergence School of Music In the Running: Copland,” The Daily Iowan, March 4, 1958, http://dailyiowan.lib.uiowa.edu/DI/1958/di1958-03-04.pdf.
² Justice, Donald, “Chasing Billy- Copland’s Music- Pleases Audiences,” The Daily Iowan, March 7, 1958, http://dailyiowan.lib.uiowa.edu/DI/1958/di1958-03-07.pdf.
³ Perlis, Vivian, “The Tender Land,” Oxford Music Online, Grove Music Online, https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/ omo-9781561592630-e-5000905177. (accessed September 10, 2018).

About the Author

Oboist Jenna Sehmann is a performer and teacher currently located in Iowa City, IA. Ms. Sehmann serves as the oboe studio teacher at Cornell College (Mount Vernon, IA) and Mount Mercy University (Cedar Rapids, IA). She is also the Teaching Assistant for the oboe studio at the University of Iowa, where she is pursuing her Doctor of Musical Arts in performance and pedagogy under Dr. Courtney Miller.

She holds a Master of Music degree in oboe performance from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and a Bachelor of Music degree in both music performance and music industry from Eastern Kentucky University. Regionally, Jenna has performed with Orchestra Iowa, Dubuque Symphony, Dayton Philharmonic, Evansville Philharmonic, and the Bach Ensemble of St. Thomas. To learn more about Jenna, visit her website jennasehmann.com

program notes from JCL concert in 2000 featuring the music of Maria Schneider

Mar 11 2019

Students Investigate: A Deeper Dive into the Music of Maria Schneider

Posted on March 11, 2019March 11, 2019 by Katie Buehner

JCL Features the Music of Maria Schneider (2000)

by Toni LeFebvre

jcl concert program from 2000 — Concert Program, Johnson County Landmark, Wednesday April 2000

On April 26, 2000, Johnson County Landmark, the premiere big band of the University of Iowa, featured the music of band leader, John Rapson, and award-winning American jazz composer, Maria Schneider. Programmed were three pieces from Schneider’s 1994 debut studio album, “Evanescence” – “Wrigly”, “Evanescence”, and “Gush”.¹ Not only does the programming of Maria Schneider’s music display the jazz program’s commitment to a meaningfully well-rounded education in jazz history for student musicians and audience members alike, but to highlight her compositions is to underscore the diversity of American music and its infinite aesthetic possibilities.

Listen to JCL performing “Wyrgly”

Maria Schneider

Since launching her career in the late 1980’s, Maria Schneider has been drawn not to the conventional sound of the traditional American big band, but to orchestral colors, classical composition techniques, soloist-improvised bridges, and an emotional subtlety atypical to the accustomed big band sound.² She has studied with and been mentored by two prominent names in American jazz history, Gil Evans and Bob Brookmeyer. These studies, combined with a unique vision for musical storytelling, have fostered Schneider’s chart-topping masterpieces which defy categorization and alter the notion of what a modern American big band can sound like.³

Maria Schneider remains one of the most prominent pioneers for women in jazz. In a 2016 spotlight interview for JAZZed magazine, Schneider affirmed that she has never seen her gender as being relevant in terms of her music.⁴ Regardless, one cannot deny that she holds a position as a prominent female role model in a male-dominated genre that jazz performers and listeners of all ages and genders look to as an example of originality of voice and cutting-edge musicianship at its finest. In a professional musical outlet where women are broadly marginalized, Maria Schneider is a true luminary for women composers and for anyone looking to test the boundaries of tradition.

¹ Alexander, Peter. “Music by John Rapson and Maria Schneider will be featured by JCL April 26.” UI News Iowa City, Iowa), April 14, 2000.

² Woolfe, Zachary. “Prairie Jazz Companion.” New York Times (New York, New York), April 12, 2013.

³ “No boundaries: A daring composer defies categories.” Economist (New York, New York), March 8, 2014.

⁴ “Maria Schneider – Music is About Life.” JAZZed (Las Vegas, NV), May 20, 2016.

About the Author

Toni LeFebvre head shot Toni LeFebvre, originally from Bettendorf, IA, is an active trumpet player and music educator. She completed her undergraduate degree in Music Education at the University of Northern Iowa in 2014. She was most recently the Band Director at Okoboji High School from 2015 to 2017 before moving to Iowa City to pursue a Master’s degree in Music Education at the University of Iowa, which she will complete May of 2019. In addition to her graduate studies, Toni has directed the Iowa City New Horizon’s concert and jazz ensembles, and is the co-founder and leader of the Iowa Women’s Jazz Orchestra, a big band comprised of women from across the state of Iowa which seeks to inspire young female musicians to find their voice in the jazz idiom. Upon completion of her Master’s degree, she plans to return to the field of public education as a high school band director in Iowa.

Check out a profile of Toni in The Daily Iowan from March 11, 2019.

Mar 06 2019

STUDENT EXHIBIT: In Our Lives: The Beatles Yesterday and Today

Posted on March 6, 2019September 12, 2019 by Katie Buehner

ABOUT THE EXHIBIT

IN OUR LIVES was designed in the Fall 2018 offering of Donna’s “World of The Beatles” course. Participating students studied her materials–donated in Donna’s name to the Rita Benton Music Library–and worked together to flesh out the different themes that now define their multimedia, multidirectional account of the enduring legacy of The Beatles that stretches across each fin. The exhibit design is a tribute to the rich learning experiences Donna created for University of Iowa students, and a preview of the valuable learning experiences her collection will support for years to come.

We invite you to journey through the World of The Beatles in the following ways.

PANELS: “THE MUSICIANS,” “THE MUSIC,” “BEATLEMANIA!,” “THE BEATLES OF TODAY”

panel 3 from the in our lives exhibits Each of the four exhibit panels represent the combined efforts of the corresponding topic subgroups (notated as “Deeper Dives” on the front of each Exhibit Panel).

The Musicians: Band Image/Identity, Working Together, Going Solo, Songwriting

Who were The Beatles as Public Figures? Do details of particular songs speak to their Personal/Public experiences?

The Music: Catalog Overview, Albums Early, Albums Late 1, Albums Late 2

What behind-the-scenes events became factors in the production of their albums?

Beatlemania!: Tours, Magical Mysteries, Yellow Submarines, Theories

What was a Beatles concert tour like? How did other types of Beatles media (e.g., fan newsletters, magazines, films, etc.) sustain mass interest in The Beatles? What does the “Paul is Dead” hoax teach us about Beatles fandom?

The Beatles of Today: Managing, Symbolizing, Celebrating, Recreating?

Who were the “fifth Beatles”? What can we learn from classic Beatles art/imagery about how The Beatles are remembered? What does it mean to pay tribute to a group like The Beatles?

Student Collection Highlights and Blog Posts

As part of their work on the exhibit, participating students familiarized themselves with the vast array of reference books, documentaries, and Beatles memorabilia that Donna’s family donated to the library in her name. Visit the Rita Benton Music Library website throughout the semester to read blog posts by the participating students, faculty, and library staff, which will examine the objects and themes of this exhibit in greater depth.

Ernst Krenek visit to UCSD (an3_m333_1189_1), Harry Crosby Photographs. MSS 333. Special Collections & Archives, UC San Diego

Mar 05 2019

Students Investigate: A Deeper Dive into Ernst Krenek

Posted on March 5, 2019March 6, 2019 by Katie Buehner

The University Orchestra Performs Ernst Krenek, November 17, 1965

by Lisa Mumme

UI Symphony Orchestra program, November 17, 1965

Can works composed in the United States be considered American if they draw on European styles? When does an immigrant – and his art – become American?

The November 17, 1965 University Orchestra program offers one opportunity to consider how these questions can be navigated. The program notes for his Symphonic Elegy, In memoriam: Anton Webern (1946) present Austrian-born Czech Ernst Krenek (1900-1991) as an American composer.¹ His American citizenship is emphasized, noting that the piece was written in St. Paul, MN, nine years after Krenek’s emigration. However, William Pepper, the program notes’ author, unifies the four pieces of this program by appealing to European dynasties of composers. Pepper notes that while Mozart and Beethoveen are considered members of the First Viennese School, Webern was part of founding the Second. As Webern’s student, Krenek was a direct descendant of the Second Viennese School.² By framing the program in this way, Pepper emphasizes the way that programming at the University of Iowa during the late sixties involved experimentalists without straying too far from canonical giants.

Krenek’s association with the European tradition of art music give his music prestige, but he is still claimed as an American composer. Here, his Americanness is legitimized by subtly emphasizing his flight from oppression in Nazi Germany.³ Pepper notes that Webern was killed in Germany when he exited his house after curfew, further emphasizing the political priorities that loomed large in the American mind of the 1960s. These program notes seek to establish Krenek’s piece as both the product of American freedom and the heir of the great Viennese masters.

Correspondence between Krenek and Himie Voxman about scheduling a trip to campus is held in the Rita Benton Music Library Special Collections, but there is no evidence yet whether Krenek was able to visit.⁴

Ernst Krenek, Krenek to Himie Voxman, undated, in Himie Voxman Papers, Rita Benton Music Library, University of Iowa

¹ Charlotte Purkis, “Krenek [Křenek], Ernst.” Grove Music (2001) https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.O902602.

² William Pepper, “Program Notes,” University Symphony Orchestra, Second Concert, 1965-66 Season.

³ Purkis, “Krenek [Křenek], Ernst.”

⁴ Ernst Krenek, Krenek to Himie Voxman, undated, in Himie Voxman Papers, Rita Benton Music Library, University of Iowa.

About the Author

Lisa Pollock Mumme will finish her M.A in Musicology at the University of Iowa in Spring 2019. Lisa studies gender and music, specifically in film music, with a secondary interest in the performing bodies of nineteenth-century Latin American opera world. Lisa’s work in film music focuses on gender in genre film, with particular attention to dystopian works. Lisa’s thesis on the Mad Max franchise located a site of embodied resistance for one disempowered character in her diegetic performance of her own theme, and defined competing musical forces that simultaneously masculinize and feminize subsequent characters. Her secondary area of research concerns the nineteenth-century Mexican opera singer and composer Ángela Peralta. Lisa plans to develop both facets of her research as a PhD student next year.

Jan 10 2019

STUDENT EXHIBIT: Exploring Our Sounds: Traditions of American Music Making at the University of Iowa

Posted on January 10, 2019April 2, 2019 by Katie Buehner

What is American Music? What does the idea of “American” music making mean for different University of Iowa artists and audiences?

In what ways have University of Iowa musicians, audiences, conductors, critics, and historians contributed to the musical identity of the United States? In what ways might they do so in the future?

The students of the Fall 2018 offering of the graduate musicology seminar in American music invite you to consider these questions as they relate to the place of American music in the past, present, and future of the University of Iowa School of Music.

The “Exploring Our Sounds” exhibit, which is on display throughout the Spring 2019 semester on the first floor of the Voxman Music Building, showcases our responses to these questions. Throughout the semester, we will be posting on the objects and themes of this exhibit in greater depth.

We hope you return to the blog and participate in “exploring our sounds.”

Students Investigate: Deeper Dives into American Music Making at the University of Iowa

March 4: A Deeper Dive into Ernst Krenek by Lisa Mumme

March 12: A Deeper Dive into the Music of Maria Schneider by Toni LeFebvre

March 19: A Deeper Dive into the SUI concert of Copland compositions, March 5, 1958 by Jenna Sehmann

March 26: A Deeper Dive into H. S. Perkins’s The Nightingale by C. A. Norling

April 2: Sounds from the Field – Anthony Burgess in Iowa City: How Clockwork Orange’s Author Came to Write a Symphony for the University of Iowa by Dr. Nathan Platte

Planning Your Visit

Bring headphones and a mobile device so you can hear what you are reading about.
Where possible, we have provided direct access to the different traditions of American music making discussed in the form of a digital music playlist. Examples were selected to further illustrate points in our exhibit text, and to encourage broader enjoyment of the diverse sounds and styles that make up the traditions of American music making at the University of Iowa.
The Exhibit Playlist can be accessed at https://bit.ly/2TAom3t, or by scannable QR code at the exhibit.
Look out for theme clusters: “Curriculums,” “Student Musical Life,” and “Composers.”
Over the semester, we conducted individual studies of the displayed items, drawn from the Rita Benton Music Library collections, and then worked together to put our independent work in dialogue with that of our colleagues. The “Curriculums,” “Student Musical Life,” and “Composers” areas of the exhibit are the results of these collaborative efforts.
Be ready to explore further.
The dotted lines running throughout the exhibit are representative of the broader thematic connections that crisscross the different areas and aspects of the “Exploring Our Sounds” Exhibit. The expected and unexpected links that are made between “American” sounds, university programming, local community traditions, and more, should leave you thinking about the questions we asked above.