THE ORAL HISTORY OF THE ARTS
ARCHIVE
IN THE LIBRARY OF CALIFORNIA STATE
UNIVERSITY AT LONG BEACH
The Oral History of the Arts Archive, established in 1974, is designed to
preserve and develop archival material pertaining to the cultural development
of Southern California in the early twentieth century by recording personal
experiences, collecting related documents, researching specific topics,
retrieving scattered bibliographic information, and evaluating other potential
topics for further studies.
The Oral History component has over three hundred hours of interviewing,
some as complete oral histories, but others as single interviews relating
to the total topic; the documents which have been collected and catalogued
relate to specific individuals and institutions, and accompany some of the
topics which have been completed, often as graduate theses; the potential
for additional topics has been explored with a preliminary bibliography
and cursory commentary.
One particular aspect of the archival emphasis is to establish the situation
into which the emigres from Nazi Germany came in the 1930s, and thus to
accurately assess their unique contribution to the growth of cultural activity
in the area. With this focal point, it has been necessary to view three
groups: the exiles of the 1930s; the immigrants as a whole, especially those
who arrived in the earlier part of the century; and the native-born artists,
all of whom have contributed to the cultural growth and change. Information
on such major figures as Schoenberg, Klemperer, and Stravinsky are treated
peripherally since complete archives are devoted to the preservation of
their material. The major emphasis in the Archive is on the early years,
ca. 1920 -1950, and at present the Archive has five specific units as follows:
I. INDIVIDUALS
A. MUSICIANS*
1) The Wesley Kuhnle Repository
2) The Gerald V. Strang Collection
3) The Dane Rudhyar Collection
4) The Richard Buhlig Collection
5) The Olga Steeb Collection
6) The Paul Pisk Study
7) The Morris H. Ruger Study
8) The Vadah Bickford Study
9) The Richard Keys Biggs Study
B. EXILE WRITERS**
1) George Froeschel Oral History (9) (art.:H.B. Moeller)
2) Fredrick Kohner Oral History
3) Henry Koster Oral History (2) (art.: M. Mierendorff)
4) Hans Wilhelm Oral History (6) (art.: J. Roden)
5) Wilhelm Speyer Collection (2 ) (art., & Nachlass : J. Roden )
6) Emil Ludwig Study (art.: J. Roden)
7) Victoria Wolf Lectures
II. INSTITUTIONS*
l) The Pacific Southwest Chapter of
the American Musicological Society Archive (PSC-AMS)
2) Chamber Music in Los Angeles, 1922-1954 Study
3) The Long Beach Symphony Study
4) The Pasadena Community Playhouse Study
III. ORAL HISTORY TOPICS AND STUDIES
1) The Rise of the University Composer
2) Jazz in Los Angeles from the 1910s to the Present
IV. COMPUTER BIBLIOGRAPHY (lost)
V. ORAL COLLECTIONS
1) The California State University at Los Angeles Encounter
Series
2) KPFA, Berkeley, Tapes
For information regarding the Oral History of the Art Archive, please contact
me at parayner@csulb.edu or William Weber at wmweber@csulb.edu.
*The terms Repository, Collection and Archive imply personal documents have
been preserved. Study implies that unpublished information has been assembled
and organized, but no doucments have been preserved.
** The numbers in parenthesls indicate the number of interviews.
.
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MUSICIANS
The first three categories relate to individual items of Southern California
culture and form the core of the Archive; the fourth category is the much
needed bibliography; and the fifth category contains a broad and varied
set of interviews and lectures adding to the total topic. In most cases,
an aural aspect is central to each unit; these will be discussed briefly
in the order presented above.
The Wesley Kuhnle Repository has been reported in the Music Library
Association NOTES (September, 1976, pp. 16-26). Briefly, it documents the
career of Wesley Kuhnle (1898-1962), a Southern California performing musician
who turned to research in early keyboard music. The Repository shows three
specific concentrations: 1) his career as a performing musician and private
music teacher; 2) his research on historic tunings and temperaments for
keyboard music from the fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries; and
3) his work on performance practices for early keyboard music. The Repository
has been cited by Owen Jorgensen in his book, Tuning the Historical Temperaments
by Ear, (No. Michigan University Press, 1977). The Repository contains fifty-six
magnetic tapes relating to items 1 and 2 above; correspondence including
a complete set of letters from Kuhnle's study-tour to Berlin in 1923; 3)
concert announcements, programs and reviews, 1921-1962; 4) musical arrangements
and original compositions; 5) biographical records; 6) photographs, both
personal of Kuhnle and his colleagues, particularly Henry Cowell and Richard
Buhlig, as well as photographs of his mustcal instruments; 7) Kuhnle's personal
llbrary; and 8) miscellaneous materials.
The Gerald V. Strang Collection, represents the most extensive collection
in the Archive. With the exception of a few documents of Arnold Schoenberg
which had been donated to the Schoenberg Institute, all of Strang's papers,
books, disc recordings and magnetic tapes, mostly privately cut or taped,
and generally unpublished, are preserved here. The major categories for
cataloging are:
I. Original Work, 1) published music; 2) MS music; 3) published articles
and books; 4) MS articles and books; 5) New Music Series with Strang as
general editor; 6) unpublished formal lectures; 7) biographical documentation;
8) student projects; 9) oriental music studies;
II. Personal Library; 10) Schoenberg, Berg and Ives scores autographed or
personally inscribed; 11) books and articles by, or about, Schoenberg or
Toch, autographed or inscribed; 12) disc recordings of unpublished music;
13) tapes, including lectures by Strang, performances of contemporary music,
etc; 14) articles collected by Strang.
Gerald Strang, Schoenberg's first assistant in Southern California and editor
of Henry Cowell's New Music Quartery for a number of years, has been particularly
active and well-known for his activities as composer, educator and acoustician
from the 1930s until his death. His career and philosophies have been documented
in an approximately fifteen-hour oral history,
presently being transcribed, as well as in a completed master's thesis by
Mitchell A. Berman, "Gerald Strang: Composer, Educator, Acoustician"
(January, 1977, vii + 7 pp.); available in the CSULB library. A concert
devoted solely to Strang's music, entitled "A Tribute to Gerald Strang,"
and a library exhibit displaying the varied aspects of his career were presented
during February, 1977; a magnetic tape of the concert has been preserved
in the Archive.
The Dane Rudhyar Collection contains material pertaining to the musical
side of his career, including, in particular, xerox copies of most of his
articles and books on music, many of which are unpublished. (The original
copies are still in Rudhyar's possession). Most important to the Rudhyar
Collection is a completed "Oral History of Dane Rudhyar" edited
by Sheila Finch Rayner (The Library, CSULB, 1977, ix + 166 pp.), and a set
of video-tapes from a three-day Symposium, March 24 -26, 1976, at CSULB,
and sponsored by the Oral History of the Arts Archive. The video-tapes include
a concert devoted to the music of Rudhyar plus three lectures by him, "Rudhyar
and Music in the Early Twentieth Century," "Spiritual Preparation
for the Aquarian Age," and "The Artist as a Creator." Additionally
more video-tape was shot while Rudhyar was on campus, including informal
discussions with him, his comments during a rehearsal of his music, an invaluable
three to five minute unit of Rudhyar improvising at the piano (a very rare
occurrence today), and from all of the video-tapes a thirty-minute collage
entitled "The Creativity of Dane Rudhyar" was completed bv Sheila
Finch Rayner and J. William Johnson. Many additional lectures and discussions
by and with Rudhyar have been obtained from KPFA radio in Berkeley, California.
Dane Rudhyar was born in Paris, March 23, 1895. In 1916 he came to New York
for a performance of some of his orchestral works at the Metropolitan Opera
House, and in 1920 he arrived in Hollywood to compose scenic music for the
Pilgrimage Play. He became a U. S. citizen in 1925 and has since lived mainly
in California, New Mexico and New York, earning his living as a writer on
philosophy and astrology, as well as composing and lecturing on music. As
a composer he is known as an early exponent of new forms of dissonance,
yet his music is profoundly influenced by mystical concepts. He has been
active and prolific in many fields, including poetry, and painting, as well
as music and he has a world-wide reputation as a humanistic philosopher.
The Richard Buhlig Collection is nearing completion. Buhlig (1880-1951)
was Chicago-born, European trained, and already established as a noted European
concert pianist before his return to the U. S. in 1916. He settled in Los
Angeles in approximately 1921 and considered it his permanent residence
for the remainder of his life. Buhlig's papers, including hundreds of concert
programs and reviews, letters and related biographical documents, have been
copied and are preserved in xerox
form in the Archive. (The original copies are still privately owned). A
master's thesis bv Nancy Jean Wolbert, "Richard Buhlig, a Concert Pianist:
His career and Influence in the Twentieth Century," (December 1978,
iv + 142 pp.); available in the CSULB library.
Buhlig, Schnabel and Paderewski were considered the three most noted students
of the famous pianist and teacher, Theodor Leschetizky, and Buhlig and Schnabel
had intermittent contact throughout their lives. Buhlig was one of the first
pianists of note to introduce the music of Arnold Schoenberg and Eric Wolfgang
Korngold to the concert audiences, and this as early as 1912 in London,
Berlin and Amsterdam. (Two interesting sidelights to this event are evident.
Firstly, both Schoenberg and Korngold settled in the Los Angeles area, and
secondly the music of Schoenberg was laughed at and considered a farce while
the music of Korngold was heralded as the work of a genius, - a second Mozart,
as the critics referred to him). Not only was Buhlig an exponent of the
avant-garde, but he was also one of the first concert pianists to extensively
perform the music of J. S. Bach and earlier masters. During the 1930s and
early 1940s, his transcription of Bach's "Art of the Fugue" for
two pianos was considered one of the highlights of the concert season, and
it was not only performed many times from Los Angeles and Santa Barbara
to Carmel and San Francisco, but it was also recorded by RCA Victor as a
limited release. Interestingly, both Buhlig and Schnabel were noted for
their Beethoven performances, and many times Buhlig performed the complete
set of Beethoven sonatas in a series of six or seven concerts. Also he was
noted for his lecture-concert series entitled "Five Centuries of Keyboard
Music," a program which he originated while he was at the New York
Institute for the Performing Arts, in which he also introduced the works
of the earlier composers such as Frescobaldi, Sweelinck, Byrd and others
to the public.
Inter-relationships are seen within the Archive as Buhlig, Kuhnle and Cowell
travelled to Berlin together in 1923 to study and concertize. Additionally,
Buhlig was one of the three judges who in 1922, awarded Dane Rudhyar the
$1,000.00 prize from the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the most noted musical
composition.
Olga Steeb (1890-1941), a contemporary of Buhlig in Los Angeles,
and the most noted woman pianist in the area, built an extensive network
of Music Schools (firstly Piano Schools) throughout Southern California
from Santa Monica and Long Beach to Pasadena and Redlands. The Olga Steeb
Collection documents her local and national concert career through her many
solo recitals as well as her frequent appearances with major orchestras.
Additionally it includes considerable informatton on her Music Schools,
the teachers, areas of music taught and her most noted students. A microfilm
of a scrapbook, concentrating on her Berlln concerts in 1909 and 1919, has
been obtained from her sister, Lillian Steeb French, also a musican and
teacher in the school from its
founding in 1923. Much additional information, both on her concerts and
her schools between 1914 and 1941 has been retrieved from the Pacific Coast
Musician in a study by Jean Preston entitled "Olga Steeb: A Biography"
(January, 1979, vii + 72pp.).
The role of the private music teacher, both male and female, appears to
have been the backbone of music instruction during the 1920s and 30s in
Southern California. Not only did individuals such as Steeb, Buhlig and
Kuhnle earn their livelihoods from this endevour, but they formed the major
instruction for the appreciation and promotion of music to the youth of
the area. Some conservatories were in existence, but they were small, served
only a minority of the population, and most certainly did not have all of
the best musicians in residence.
The life of Paul Amadeus Pisk, with an emphasis on his American years
has been researched in a study by Katherine Walsh, "Paul Amadeus Pisk:
A Short Biography" (May, 1980, iv + 105 pp.) both through a set of
interviews plus access to many of his notes and files. The chapters of this
study show his life, career and influence, both as a composer and as a musicologist
as follows: the Vienna Years 1893-1936; The Redlands Years 1937-1951; the
Texas Years 1951-1963; the Missourl Years 1963-1972; and 1972 to Present,
the Los Angeles Resldency and International Honors. Additionally, in four
appendices, it updates the listings of: his Musical Compositions; his Scholarly
Writings; his Personal Performances, 1973-80; and Performances of his Works,
1959-1975.
Pisk, born 1893 in Vienna, was one of the many exile muslcians form Nazi
Germany and Austria; this study provides an opportunity to contrast the
careers of American-born and trained musicians such as Strang and Steeb
with one of the many European-born and trained musicians who settled in
Southern California such as Schoenberg, Toch, Krenek, Castelnuovo -Tedesco,
Zeisl, Albersheim, Rebner and many others. As both a noted composer and
musicologist, Pisk's insight and comments on the Southern California scene
begin to show the division between the pre-and post-emigre influence. He
relates that Southern California was so primitive musically in 1935 that
the only copy of the Bach Gesamtausgabe in Southern California was
over 100 miles away in the Public Library in La Jolla (by San Diego). He
and Strang both tell of their experiences in the late 1930s in aiding the
Piano Teachers of Southern California Association to upgrade their level
of teaching and standards of performance not only by advising them but also
by adjudicating their students at specific times each year. Similarly as
chairman of the Music Department at the University of Redlands, Pisk upgraded
their teaching staff and brought his European professionalism to, at that
time, insular Southern California. (Interestingly Olga Steeb had been Head
of the Piano Department, 1915-1919, but by this time had established her
own Music Schools throughout Southern California.) Redlands, now an easy
50 miles drive away, was at that time, rural and the trip to Los Angeles
was over narrow, at times muddy
roads. To hear the Los Angeles Philharmonic, or to attend a PSC-AMS meeting
was cause for considerable planning.
The career of Morris H. Ruger, a Southern California composer and
educator from 1930 until his death in 1974, has been researched through
a series of fifteen taped interviews with his friends and colleagues, the
composer's autobiography (in MS only), numerous clippings and reviews and
personal letters; a thesis has been completed by Leslie K. Greer, "Morris
Hutchins Ruger: A Biography" (August, 1977, vii + 157 pp.); available
in the CSULB library. A scrapbook of his career and other miscella neous
documents have been preserved in the Archive to supplement the thesis and
the interviews. Additionally, numerous unpublished copies of the performances
of his music have been preserved on magnetic tape.
Ruger's compositions as well as his leadership of the Los Angeles Conservatory
have proven to be significant for Southern California cultural development.
He spent a great deal of his life supporting American music, both through
the use of American themes in his own writing, and through the encouragement
of other composers to do the same. He also contributed to the social and
aesthetic perceptions of the various music and art communities. A great
number of students, some of whom became noted in their fields, drew upon
their experiences in Ruger's music and art classes for their future careers.
One of the prime motivating forces of Ruger was his strong belief in America
and its national heritage. Because of this belief, he contributed to the
positive attitude toward American musicians as evidenced by his writings
for the Music of the West magazine; here he boosted the cause of music in
America through participation in the Society of Native American Composers
and similar organizations and through championing the works of his fellow
American composers by originating the Foundation of Contemporary Music.
Through these contrtbuttons to the music community in Southern California,
he has earned his place in the music of the twentieth century.
The careers of Vahdah Bickford and Richard Keys Biggs show
very specialized and somewhat unique, at times, peripheral aspects of music
in Southern Caltfornia. Bickford, a female guitarist appears to have been
the dominant force in organizing and promoting guitar activity and enthusiasm
in our era when that instrument was not particularly well respected. Biggs,
a church organist, was one of the more noted among the hundreds of working
church organists, but he was ignored bv the public at large, appreciated
primarily by his church and its congregation.
Each of these careers have been documented in studies through personal contact
and interviews with the individual and students (in the case of Bickford),
or with relatives and acquaintances (in the case of Biggs). The studies
by Daryl Werth, Vahdah Olcott Bickford: Founder of the American Guitar Society
(June, 1979, viii + 68 pp.), and by Sister Angela Breeden, "I Have
Loved, O Lord, the Beauty of Thy House" "The Career of Richard
Keys Bigg" (June, 1980, vii + 49 pp.), both include extensive listings
of performances, compositions, and career details. They are available in
the Archive, and serve as a further insight into an unknown aspect of Southern
California culture.
EXILE WRITERS
Exile writers George Froeschel, Frederick Kohner, Henry Koster, Emil
Ludwig, Wilhelm Speyer and Hans Wilhelm have all been documented, and articles
on the careers of the latter three have been published by Johanna Roden
in Deutsche Exile-Literatur seit 1933 in Kalifornien, volume I (ed.
John Spalek, Bern: Francke Verlag, 1975), and Deutsche Exil-Literatur
seit 1933 an der Ostkuste, volume II (at press). The Speyer Nachlass
in particular, collected and organized by Dr. Roden, has been preserved
in xerox form as have miscellaneous documents of E. Ludwig and H. Wilhelm
and soon will be available for use. (The original Speyer documents are still
in the hands of the heirs of the estate.) The life and work of George Froeschel,
a noted novelist, editor of the famous Berliner Illustrierte, a script-writer
for MGM Studios for seventeen years and a recipient of an "Oscar"
for his work with the film, " Mrs. Miniver," has been documented
by Hans-Bernhard Moeller (also in Spalek, ibid, I/l, 720-30; and I/2, 68-71;
194-95). His career and his experiences are presently being further explored
bv Johanna Roden in a series of revealing Oral History interviews on the
Jewish writer, both in pre-Nazi Germany, and in exile in Southern California.
This Oral History along with an Oral History of Hans Wilhelm and An Oral
History of Frederick Kohner are in progress, as are interviews with associates
of E. Ludwig and L. Speyer.
The emphasis in this portion of the Archive is on the effect which Southern
California had on exile writers and what effect they had on Southern California.
It has been noted in recent research that the literary works of these writers
were affected in either content or in form due to their particular experience
of emigration and their new living situation. However, one also finds a
number of novels in which exile itself is the dominant theme, while in still
others the author's philosophical outlook on life itself changed. Some writers
used the Southern California setting, its landscape and its people for their
writings, and others were inspired by it with no direct comment being reflected
in the writings. Emil Ludwig reports that he continued to write about exile
after his arrival in Santa Barbara in the 1940s, while Hans Wilhelm describes
his life in Los Angeles in his novel Das Gluck der Andernachs, the
story of his own family. These diversified ideas are being explored in this
study, and a set of interviews with the aim of showing the relationships
between immigrant and host country as it relates to the exile experience
of some German writers is hence being conducted.
INSTITUTIONS
The Pacific Southern Chapter of the American Musicological Society (abbreviated
PSC-AMS) Archive is the collection of material from the Chapter's founding
in 1939 to the present, and it is also the repository for the current materials
as well. Briefly, the Archive contains a listing of the Chapter officers
and a listing of the programs from it founding; the former is complete,
the latter, almost complete. Additionally, the annual directories of the
membership, first begun in 1967, and the constitution are preserved. Furthermore,
copies of many of the programs, announcements and mailings to the membership
have been preserved. Finally, some correspondence among the Chapter officers
and the membership is in the Archive.
The PSC-AMS Archive provides a valuable insight into the growth of cultural
activities in Southern California. A new, vital force emerges in Southern
California, - the exile community from Nazi Germany. As we are aware, the
growth of musicology in the United States stems form this migration of scholars.
But what is significant on the West Coast is that this discipline was not
practiced by an exclusive group of music historians, but by an association
of musicologists, avant-garde composers, performers and philosophers. The
topics of the early meetings were not restricted to the traditional musicological
topics; for example, in 1940, Paul Pisk read a paper, "A Modern Music
Theory and Philosophy." In 1941 Walter Rubsamen, the founder of the
Chapter, read a paper entitled "Revolution, Totalitarianism and Music;"
in 1942, Arnold Schoenberg was Chairman of the Chapter, the same year that
Gerald Strang read a paper entitled "Sliding Tones in Oriental Music,"
and in 1945 Theodor W. Adorno, a member of the Frankfurt School of Social
Research and at that time a professor of philosophy at UCLA, read a paper,
"Composing for Films." Further evalu ation of the material in
this Arcilive is being supplemented with taped interviews from as many of
the early participants of the Chapter as can still be contacted, not only
with those who are still living in the area, but with those in retirement
throughout the United States and Europe.
We find in this Archive documentaiton of relationships with other activities
in Southern California. Within the contents of the PSC-AMS Archive, we see
a marked change in the musical community of the 1940s and 1950s from that
of Wesley Kuhnle and the 1920s and 1930s. Kuhnle, the performer of the "UltraModern"
in 1925, who was immersed in pre -Bach studies in 1940, was also a performer
in the ensemble for Schoenberg's "Herzgewachse" in 1952 and a
participant in various ensembles for some performances of the works of Igor
Stravinsky. Most significant here, however, is the contrast in the musical
community from the 1930s to the 1940s and the realization that a new artistic
culture moved into Southern California with the arrival of the emigres.
Here we have, initially, a fusion of the old and the new, the old music
along with the avant-garde, as well as the old world culture with that of
the new.
Virtually nothing has been written about the dozens of chamber music ensembles
and series in Southern California even though, for the musicians involved,
they represent the core of the art with their intimacy of the performance.
Over 150 ensembles and nine concert series have been listed in a thesis
bv Brian Walls, "Chamber Music in Los Angeles, 1923-1954: A
History of Concert Series, Ensembles and Repertoire" (May, 1980. v
+ 228 pp.), available in the CSULB library. This study discusses ten ensembles
in detail including local ensembles such as the Zoellner String Quartet,
Bartlett-Frankel String Quartet, Compinsky Trio, Alma Trio, American Art
String Quartet and so forth as well as eight concert series such as the
Coleman Chamber Music Concert, Elizabeth Spraque Coolidge Concerts, Los
Angeles Chamber Music Societies, Los Angeles County Museum Concerts, etc.,
organizations which sponsored both resident as well as international touring
groups.
Many professional, orchestral musicians, often in combination with talented
amateur musicians found the opportunity to perform the specialized literature
of chamber music, including compositions that were not "in vogue"
with the average concert-going public; often they would perform without
monetary remuneration, simply for their own personal enjoyment. This is
most evident in the series, Evenings on the Roof, founded by Peter Yates
in 1939, and also in the New Music Society of Henry Cowell, founded in approximately
1923. Both series encouraged the performance of any unusual music for the
day, including music of the Renaissance and Baroque eras.
Similarly some concert series such as the Coleman Chamber Concerts (founded
1904) and Evenings on the Roof (founded 1939) continue to the present, the
latter as the Monday Evening concerts. The former series brought such famous
performers and ensembles as Lotte Lehman, Rosalyn Tureck, Gregor Piatigorsky,
Budapest String Quartet, Salzedo Concert Ensemble, Julliard String Quartet
and Pro Musica of Belgium to the South ern California audiences.
The changing repertoire performed by both ensembles and solists shows a
gradual move, not only toward the acceptance of the "modern" and
"early" music by the general public, but also a more extensive
and sophisticated repertoire of the Romantic and Classic repertoire. A 116
page listing of the repertoire of each of these various ensembles shows
evidence of thls change (at least in certain ensembles), a change that can
be noted in the careers of Buhlig, Kuhnle and Ruger.
Only in the late 1970s has the Long Beach Symphony, founded in 1928,
begun to reach the stature of a major orchestra. Over the decades it has
been a fairly typical small, amateur/professional organization serving its
community. However, it did feature noted guests artists as early as 1930
with, for example, the appearance of Rafael Mendez. Also the orchestra supported
local talent, encouraging young,
promising performers to solo with them. In 1956, Marilyn Horne, raised in
Long Beach, and now with the New York Metropolitan Opera Company, performed
the first of her many guest performances with the orchestra, and this was
before she had completed her studies.
The Symphony Archives are presently being organized by Kenneth Delene in
order to preserve its heritage, and a brief study on the history of the
organization has been completed bv Nancy Kay Arnold, The Long Beach Symphony
Orchestra (September, 1979, iv + 81pp.) As a study of what many local ensembles
could do, this study lists the concerts, concert halls, conductors, guest
artists, budgets as well as supporting staff, and hence shows the desire
for and development of culture in Southern California. An additional feature
of this study is the inclusion of two transcribed interviews, one with Dr.
Theodore Strang, M.D., President of the Symphony Association from 1940-44,
and the other with Mrs. Laura Killingsworth, President of the Symphony Association
from 1959-60, and now President of the Public Corporation for the Arts.
Her interview in particular provides an insight into support, especially
women's support, of the arts.
Other symphonic organizations in Southern California deserve more attention
also; the Pasadena Symphony with Dr. Richard Lert, an emigre, and noted
conductor of the orchestra for many years; the Glendale Svmphony and Kuhnle's
association with it in the early 1920s; the Women's Orchestra of ca. 1917-1918,
one of the numerous women's orchestras of the time (another 1925-34) and
the Los Angeles Symphony, 1887-1918 to mention a few. Additionally, the
Los Angeles Philharmonic, organized and supported by William Andrews Clark
in 1919 and the Hollywood Bowl, established in 1920 have been the two major
orchestral organizations serving Southern California over the decades. Both
are gradually being researched, although even here much study is still needed.
The history and influence of the Pasadena Community Playhouse (1917-1969)
has been documented by Gail L. Shoup, Jr., both through an extensive set
of interviews, ten of which are presently a part of the Archive collection,
and through his dissertation, "The Pasadena Community Playhouse: Its
Origins and History from 1917 to 1942" (UCLA Ph.D. Dissertation, 1968,
xiii + 404 pp.). The tapes include interviews with three of the four founders
of the group as well as other individuals who were intimate with the Playhouse.
Other taped interviews, already completed will be added to the collection
in the future.
The significance of this institution, founded only a few years before the
Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hollywood Bowl, offered a unique
cultural group to Southern California at a time when new, cultural values
were just being formulated. For over half a century the Playhouse served
as a base for both amateurs and professionals providing the amateurs with
an opportunity to develop their skills and talents and the professionals,
who often participated at significantly reduced fees, the opportunity to
work with or in a repertoire other than the standard. Hundreds of original
plays were given on the Mainstage or in the experimental Laboratory-Workshop
which brought the Playhouse to international prominence as early as the
1930s. With this quasi-amateur or semi-professional basis, this organization
supplied both stage and screen with many capable and some famous artists.
ORAL HISTORY TOPICS AND STUDIES
The primary emphasis of the Archive, as indicated bv the title, is Oral
History relating to the cultural development in Southern California. Although
we are documenting individual careers such as those of Strang, Rudhyar,
Buhlig and others (both through interviewing and with supporting documents
where possible), and institutions such as the PSC-AMS and Chamber Music
Ensembles, we are focusing on topics which concentrate on the currents of
cultural activity within the area as a whole in contrast to other archives
which concentrate on the most prominent figures such as Schoenberg, Stravinsky,
Toch and others. In this way we see the social, political and cultural setting
in which the major figures flourished. The topics, apart form those already
mentioned encompass such diversified items as "Pianists's Careers,"
"The Rise of the University Composer," and "Jazz" as
well as many exploratory and formative topics. All of these topics are being
developed through interviews with many different individuals from the private
music teacher to the professional performers and educators. To date, over
300 hours of interviewing have been completed with approximately 200 different
individuals.
Another topic, "The Rise of the University Composer," conducted
primarily by William Weber of the History Department, is concerned with
how American composers became concentrated in institutions of higher learning
during the middle of the twentieth century. This is the only topic which
encompasses a broader base than Southern California, involving noted composers
of international stature. His research shows how exile composers such as
Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Toch interacted with native-born composers such
as John Cage, Gerald Strang and Leon Kirchner and helped legitimize composing
as a profession and enabled it to become more firmly based in universities
and colleges.
As implied above, this topic could well be expanded into the Rise of the
University and its influence on music and music instruction in general.
Not only does the university provide professional training in voice and
instruments (the role of the conservatories in the past), but it provides
the opportunity for the student to receive semi-professlonal experience
in ensembles such as orchestra, chamber ensembles, choruses and madrigal
groups, jazz, popular and commercial
music, but it also is the only place where opera experience and performance
can consistently be heard and received. (Opera has never succeeded for any
length of time in Southern California.)
Because of the Hollywood film and recording studios, Los Angeles became
a major center for musicians and consequently many talented jazz and commercial
musicians migrated to the area. However, little is known about the role
that Los Angeles played in the development of jazz, especially the early
extension of New Orleans, Chicago and Kansas City jazz. Through a valuable
set of interviews with some of these jazz musicians who settled in Los Angeles
in the 1920s and 30s, Gordon Neal Herman has initiated a valuable study
of this topic in "A Brief Survey of Jazz in Los Angeles from the
1910s to Present" (January, 1979, ix + 56pp.). He uncovered a number
of currently thriving clubs in Los Angeles devoted especially to the preservation
of New Orleans dixeland jazz and recorded a set of interviews on early jazz
in Los Angeles with eleven different performers. Herman interviewed: William
"Aud" Alexander, banjo (b. 1902; arrived L.A. 1912); George Ball,
drums (b. 1913; L.A. 1920s); Andrew Blakney, trumpet (b. 1898; L.A. 1925);
Frank Bostwick, drums (b. 1905; L.A. 1923); Teddy Buckner, cornet (b. 1910;
L.A. 1930); Buddy Burns, bass (b. 1905; L.A. 1936); Joe Darensbourg, clarinet
(b. 1908; L.A. 1925); Mike Delay, trumpet (b. l901; L.A. 1945); George Orrendorff,
trumpet (b. 1907; L;A. 1925); Forrest Powell, trumpet (b. 1912; L.A. 1936);
and Floyd Turnham, saxophone (b. 1915; L.A. 1928). In these interviews we
encounter personal references to individuals such as Paul Whiteman, Benny
Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Al Jolson, Glen Miller, King Oliver, Jelly Roll
Morton, Kid Ory and many others, and we find information on many of the
clubs where they congregated and performed such as Frank Sebastian's Cotton
Club (Culver City), the Ambassador and Alexandria hotels, the Venice Ballroom,
Club Alabam, Jelly Roll Morton's Wayside Park Club, and so forth.
Many significant facts emerge from this study and these interviews. Paul
Whiteman's first major success came with his appearance at the Alexandria
Hotel in downtown Los Angeles in 1919, and in the early 1920s "almost
every major New Orleans figure who went to Chicago appeared in Los Angeles"
(Herman, p. iv); already in 1912 "Freddie Keppard led the first band
out of New Orleans, the "Original Creole Orchestra," and took
it not to Chicago, but to Los Angeles" (Herman, p. iii). By the 1930s,
Louis Armstrong was in Los Angeles (1931-32) making records, according to
George Orrendorff who played in the band, and Benny Goodman and his band
appeared in Los Angeles (1935), an event which marked the beginning of the
popularity of the swing era according to several jazz historians. Lionel
Hampton had been in Los Angeles since 1925, the year that radio station
KFI did the first Los Angeles to New York radio broadcast; "Aud"
Alexander relates that he was a member of that band. Because of his likeness
to Louis Armstrong, Teddy Buckner did "stand-in" work for Armstrong
in films such as "Pennies from Heaven," and "Everyday's a
Holiday." (Since 1967 Buckner has had his own band at Disneyland as
a steady engagement.) At least five of the eleven musicians interviewed
have done extensive recording and sound track work in various ensembles
for the movie industry. Interestingly Herman uncovered twelve Dixeland Jazz
Societies in Southern California, and three of the clubs that he visited
had a total of over 400 members present at the time that he was there.
Since many of the jazz musicians are black, it should be noted at this point
that Los Angeles had a black community in the late 19th century, a community
which had its own, weekly newspaper, the California Eagle in 1880, a year
before the beginning of the Los Angeles Times. Despite this black community,
there is virtually no reference in the Los Angeles Times to either black
musicians or to jazz and popular music until after World War II. Additionally
until a merger in the 1950s there was a local black musicians union, separate
from the white union. Thus, the stigma of jazz as the stigma of black is
most evident in the "cultural" development in Southern California
in the early twentieth century.
Many interesting accounts of significant musical events and cultural situations
are apparent in the Oral History tapes. For example, Dane Rudhyar recalls,
in a seven-minute account, his impressions of the first performance of Stravinsky's
"Le Sacre du Printemps" in Paris in 1913. Although there are many
similarities with the accepted text-book account of the event, there is
a much greater insight into the total picture; not only was the music somewhat
shocking, but the dance was even more unusual, an item generally overlooked
by musicians. Peter Yates, the originator and impressario of Evenings on
the Roof, gives further insight into the careers of Buhlig, Kuhnle and Cowell
in some of the last interviews conducted before his death. He expounds on
the significance of Kuhnle's work in historical tunings and temperaments
for the performance of early keyboard music. Additionally, Gerald Strang
talks about his study and editorial work with both Schoenberg and Toch;
Edward Rebner, an exile now residing in Munich, recalls the field of semi-popular
music in Los Angeles in the 1930s and '40s; Gerhardt Albersheim, an exile
who retired in Basel, Switzerland, recollects the role of an accompanist
in Los Angeles during the same years; Paul Pisk, laments the dearth of any
material pertaining to Bach in all of Los Angeles when he arrived in the
late 1930s; Pauline Alderman talks of the value of the Huntington Library
in the 1930s when she was still a student; and Willi Apel, retired and interviewed
in the Austrian Tyrol, recalls the arrival of exile musicologists such as
Manfred Bukofzer during the late 1930s.
Many other topics are being considered, although only a cursory exploration
has been completed, primarily a brief bibliography from various Los Angeles
newspaper clippings in the Los Angeles Public Library (abbreviated LAPL
Scrapbk) and local music journals such as the Pacific Coast Musician, Pacific
Coast Musical Review, California Arts and Architecture and so forth. These
bibliographies, coupled with scattered peripheral information obtained from
the taped interviews and comprehension of the total musical scene provide
the potential for a better understanding of the growth and change in culture
in Southern California. Potential topics include: Women in Music, Women
as patron of the Arts, Black musicians and music, Touring artists in L.A.,
Music and the U. S. depression (WPA), Film music, Pasadena Civic Center
(1932) vs. L. A. Music Center 1964), and Opera in Southern California (not
a lucrative area for study in Southern California)
An extensive, albeit random bibliography of small articles from the Los
Angeles Public Library Scrapbooks, local newspapers and journals, dating
approximatey from 1920 to the early 1950s, was being compiled and converted
into a detailed, cross-referenced computer bibiography, but is unfortunately
now lost. The information which can be found in these often short newspaper
concert announcements and reviews, commentaries on the musical scene and
so forth is an invaluable source for a detailed study of the subject. As
indicated in the commentary on "Chamber Music in Los Angeles,"
dozens of ensembles and concert series as well as hundreds of musicians's
names and concerts were pinpointed as to exact time and location, repertoire
and so forth. Similarly much of the reconstruction of the careers of Kuhnle,
Buhlig and Steeb was obtained from similar sources. Potential topics for
study are endless by perusing this material and using it as a starting point.
Clare G. Rayner
Nancy Wolbert
June, 1983
California State University,
Long Beach, CA 90840
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