In an institution whose history is full of any number of historic events, the publication last July by the Library of Congress of The Rosaleen Moldenhauer Memorial: Music History from Primary Sources, edited by Music Division Chief Jon Newsom and distinguished musicologist Alfred Mann, remains a singular achievement.
Hans Moldenhauer and Arthur Vogel atop the Matterhorn, Aug. 2, 1933 - Fritz Kast
This volume represents more than 10 years of effort by more than 100 contributors, drawn in large part from Library staff as well as from musicological scholars from around the globe. Moreover, the Hans Moldenhauer Archive (currently held in the Library's Music Division, and on which this volume is based) contains more than 3,500 musical manuscripts, correspondence and other music-related material and was assembled by Moldenhauer over the course of nearly 40 years. The archive, the contents of which span Western music history from the 12th century to modern times, remains the largest composite gift of documents related to music scholarship ever made to the Library, and is regarded as one of the greatest collections of primary source material in music ever assembled.
Envisaged by Moldenhauer as a memorial to Rosaleen, his wife of nearly 40 years, this volume is a labor of love by all involved in its creation. The realization of these labors was accomplished primarily through the driving force and vision of Moldenhauer himself, and after his death in 1987, by the efforts of his widow, Mary Moldenhauer, and by Mr. Newsom.
The volume contains more than 50 essays treating specific material contained within the archive; other substantial essays by Mann (also a longtime personal friend of the Moldenhauers) providing a general overview of the history of Western music as well as a context for the archive's contents; and a complete inventory of all the music-related material collected by Moldenhauer throughout his life. Each essay is also accompanied by a full-color facsimile of an excerpt of the material it discusses.
Besides the major contributions made by Mr. Newsom and by Library staff to this project, the admirable efforts of two staff members in particular made possible its realization. Iris Newsom, senior editor of the Library's Publishing Office, and Carol Lynn Ward-Bamford, music specialist with the Library's Music Division, who served as the project's copy editor and editorial assistant respectively. They were both involved with the project on a long-term basis and were witness to its many evolutionary stages. For Ms. Ward-Bamford, who also worked directly with the archive's contents, the difficulties encountered with this project were overshadowed by the importance of the material itself, which she described as being rich in "undiscovered treasures to be found and mysteries to be solved."
While Moldenhauer had, before his death, already deposited a large portion of his collection in various repositories throughout the United States and Europe, he had hoped to publish a facsimile edition of the most significant material in the collection, which was to be accompanied by scholarly essays. This edition, wistfully referred to by Moldenhauer as his "Taj Mahal," would serve as a memorial to Rosaleen, who died in 1982. Without the invaluable advice and support of Rosaleen, a formidable musician and scholar in her own right, Moldenhauer admitted that his archive might never have been assembled. A year before his death, Moldenhauer contacted Mr. Newsom about placing the remaining (although no less important) material from his collection at the Library, and even provided a generous fund to realize his dream of creating his "Taj Mahal."
Hans Moldenhauer, born in Mainz, Germany, in 1906, fled to the United States in 1938 to escape the rising tide of fascism in his homeland. An accomplished pianist and scholar, Moldenhauer wrote a study of performance technique involving two pianos, Duo-Pianism (1950), which remains an important work to this day. He also collaborated with Rosaleen in producing several books and articles about the life and work of the significant Austrian composer Anton von Webern. Moldenhauer was one of the first musicologists to recognize this composer's influential status in Western music.
Georges Bizet's piano arrangement of Scènes de bal by Jules Massenet, from the Moldenhauer Archive
Besides his devotion to music and musical scholarship, another great passion in Moldenhauer's life was mountain climbing, an activity he had avidly pursued from his youth during frequent excursions in the Bavarian Alps. Upon his move to the United States, he learned of his newly adopted country's mountainous Northwest, and a year later bought a round-trip bus ticket to Spokane, Wash., where he promptly led a climbing expedition up Mount Rainier. But the return portion of Moldenhauer's bus ticket was never used; instead he established a new life for himself in Spokane as a pianist and teacher, and in 1942 even founded that city's Conservatory of Music. It was also in Spokane that he first met a piano student named Rosaleen Jackman, who was later to become his wife.
In addition to the direct effects of the World War II on Moldenhauer's life, he also recognized its devastating consequences on his area of professional interest, musical scholarship, which was only just beginning to address the need for critical editions of composers' works at the war's outbreak. Perhaps one motivating factor in Moldenhauer's decision to begin assembling his own archive of primary source material in the United States was the lack of access to the very manuscripts, most of which were located in war-ravaged Europe, that would have made such musicological research possible.
Also at this time, in about 1950, Moldenhauer was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary disease that leads to blindness and has no known cure. Doctors predicted that Moldenhauer would be blind within two years. While this process eventually stretched over the course of more than 20 years, Moldenhauer himself credits this faulty prognosis as providing the incentive to begin seriously building his archive, wishing to use what remained of his failing eyesight to its fullest advantage. Even after losing his sight, Moldenhauer refused to regard his condition as an obstacle to his efforts, and with Rosaleen's assistance, continued to amass source material for his collection.
The result of Moldenhauer's efforts is an archive of material that is staggering in its breadth, including genres ranging from medieval chant to contemporary experiments in the notation of aleatoric, or "chance," music. It is a testament to Moldenhauer's insight (and foresight) that material regarding the most important Western composers—Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Stravinsky and Schoenberg among them—are represented side by side with contemporary composers whose reputations were just beginning to emerge when Moldenhauer was assembling his collection. Many of these composers—including Mahler, Webern, Ives, Ruggles, Varèse, Boulez, Penderecki, Berio, Dallapiccola, Henze, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Cage and Rochberg—have since become recognized as some of the most renowned composers today.
Also included in the collection is material from musical performers such as singers Enrico Caruso and Roland Hayes, cellist Pablo Casals, violinist Jascha Heifetz and pianist Vladimir Horowitz, as well as from such conductors as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Eugene Ormandy, Arturo Toscanini, Arthur Fiedler and Serge Koussevitzky. Moldenhauer's interests were not limited to musical material, however. The collection also includes material from major figures in the fields of literature, poetry and theater (Federico García Lorca, Hermann Hesse, Rainer Maria Rilke, George Sand and Thornton Wilder), philosophy (Paul Wittgenstein) and art (Pablo Picasso, Odilon Redon, Georges Rouault and Maurice Utrillo). In all, material from more than 2,100 individuals connected with the creative arts, including nearly every notable musical figure of note in the history of Western music, are represented in this remarkable archive.
Perhaps the most notable feature of this volume, however, is precisely the one that will be the least evident to the reader: the long-term efforts of the many individuals involved in its production, among whom Library staff members figure prominently. Such efforts on the part of Library staff have not ended with the publication of this volume, however. The staff of the National Digital Library Program is developing a Web site that will contain a full-text electronic version of this volume in a keyword-searchable format. The life's work of Moldenhauer, presently housed in several institutions, including the Library of Congress, will ultimately be brought together electronically for use by a global audience of scholars and enthusiasts.
Hans Moldenhauer's efforts in creating a legacy for his wife as well as a valuable musicological resource, therefore, continue to endure in ways he could likely never have foreseen, developing far beyond his selfless and ambitious wish to support music research by nothing less than the creation of his own archive.
