Collection Notated Music Charles Hambitzer music manuscripts,

Title

• Charles Hambitzer music manuscripts,

Summary

• The Charles Hambitzer manuscripts consist of sixteen orchestral scores or part sets for tone poems and incidental music, as well as several short pieces for various instruments and approximately twenty-five songs and stage numbers in piano-vocal format. Sketches and miscellaneous fragments are also represented. Although George Gershwin once recalled that Hambitzer, his first significant music teacher, "wrote what I then considered the finest light music," there appears to be no connection between these manuscripts and Gershwin's own compositions.

Names

• Hambitzer, Charles, -1918

Headings

• -  Hambitzer, Charles,---1918--Manuscripts
• -  Hambitzer, Charles,---1918--Autographs
• -  Music--Manuscripts--United States

Notes

• -  Charles Hambitzer was born in Beloit, Wisconsin (his birth year is variously given as 1878 or 1881) to a musical family. His great-grandfather was a violinist at the Russian court and his father owned a music store in Milwaukee. After studying with Julius Albert Jahn and Hugo Kaun, Hambitzer played in the orchestra of the Arthur Friend Stock Company, and taught piano, violin, and cello at the Wisconsin Conservatory. In 1908, he moved to New York City, where he joined Joseph Knecht's orchestra at the Waldorf-Astoria, frequently appearing as a piano soloist. At the same time, he opened a music studio on the Upper West Side, and among his many pupils was the fourteen-year-old George Gershwin, who began his studies with Hambitzer in 1912. In 1914, Hambitzer's wife died of tuberculosis, and in 1918 he succumbed to the same disease, exacerbated by an emotional breakdown. It has been widely suggested that his death caused the young Gershwin to abandon his own budding career as a concert pianist.
• -  Gift; Marc George Gershwin and Judy Gershwin; 1991.
• -  Judy Gershwin found Hambitzer's manuscripts in a storage room in her Central Park West apartment, which had formerly been the home of her mother-in-law, Rose Gershwin. It is believed that George Gershwin left the manuscripts with his mother, Rose, when he moved to California in 1936. In the same trunk as the Hambitzer materials was a manuscript page of Porgy and Bess, probably dating to 1935 (this page has been retained by the Gershwin family). There is no evidence of just how George Gershwin, who was twenty when Hambitzer died, came to possess the manuscripts, although it is known that he corresponded with members of the Hambitzer family.
• -  Finding aid available in the Library of Congress Performing Arts Reading Room and at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/eadmus.mu009016
• -  Charles Hambitzer Music Manuscripts, Music Division, Library of Congress.

Medium

• 200 items (2 boxes, 2 linear feet)

Call Number/Physical Location

• ML31 .H36

Repository

• Library of Congress Music Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA dcu http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/perform.home

Library of Congress Control Number

• 2006577402

Rights Advisory

• Certain restrictions to use or copying of materials may apply.

Access Advisory

• Open to research.
• Not all materials in this collection may be readily accessible; please request accessibility information well in advance of your visit http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/perform.contact

LCCN Permalink

• https://lccn.loc.gov/2006577402

Additional Metadata Formats

• MARCXML Record
• MODS Record
• Dublin Core Record