Fulfilling a wish When Constance Rinehart (ABLS, 1944; AMLS, 1948), retired Professor of Information and Library Studies, learned recently that funds were needed to digitize the Women Composers Collection, she decided to help make it happen.
“The collection consists primarily of first editions from the 19th and early 20th centuries,” says Kristen. “Many of the scores have never been reprinted, and in some cases, we hold the only copy.”
"I was interested in the women composers and the struggles they faced,” she says, “and I was pleased to know that the manuscripts were part of the collections at the Music Library.” Professor Rinehart, who spent half of her fourdecade-long U-M career at the library, in fact decided to cover the entire cost of the digitization project.
Kristen cites the works of Pauline Viardot as the most requested of the collection. Viardot was a celebrated 19thcentury French singer who composed much vocal music, including Canti Popolari Toscani, settings of Italian song texts from Tuscany. Also oft-requested is the work of Augusta Holmès, who wrote Ode Triomphale for the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris marking the centennial of the French Revolution. Other composers represented in the collection include Cécile Chaminade, Nadia Boulanger, Lili Boulanger, Ethel Smyth, Liza Lehmann, and Amy Beach.
Thanks to this generosity, scores by women composers both famous and less well known will be both preserved and readily accessible to scholars and performers via the Internet. According to Kristen Castellana, head of the Music Library, the digitization of the nearly 3,000 scores will make this music known to a much wider audience.
Kristen Castellana (left) with Constance Rinehart
Professor Rinehart’s gift is in memory of Wallace Bjorke, who was librarian in charge of music in the Music School from 1962 to 1992.
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New conservation librarian, and an opportunity The library recently welcomed to its staff conservation librarian Marieka Kaye, the first to hold the new endowed position made possible by a $1.25 million matching grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Marieka was for eight years a conservator at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, where she treated a wide range of materials—rare books, documents, art on paper and parchment, and photographs—and served as exhibits conservator. A Michigan native, Marieka has a master’s degree and certificate in art conservation from Buffalo State College, and a master’s degree in library and information science from San Jose State University.
“We’re excited to have Marieka Kaye joining our conservation team,” says Shannon Zachary, Samuel Rosenthal librarian for preservation and conservation. “Her experience with a variety of materials and the wide range of her interests and curiosity fits well with the incredible breadth and richness of our collections.” The matching nature of the Mellon Foundation grant affords a unique opportunity: a donor making a $1 million gift can fully endow and name the conservator position. To learn more, please contact Mari Vaydik, the library’s director of development, at 734-936-2384 or mvaydik@umich.edu.
Marieka Kaye in the conservation lab