- physdesc
-
{"format"=>"structured", "physdesc_components"=>[{"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"2.5 linear feet", "unit"=>"linear feet"}, {"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"11 boxes", "unit"=>"containers"}], "supress_display"=>true}
- unitid
-
{"value"=>"JPB 06-62", "type"=>"local_call"}
{"value"=>"20410", "type"=>"local_mss"}
- unitdate
-
{"value"=>"1888-1977", "type"=>"inclusive", "normal"=>"1888/1977"}
{"value"=>"1909-1977", "type"=>"bulk", "normal"=>"1909/1977"}
- unittitle
-
{"value"=>"Alexander Steinert papers"}
- repository
-
{"value"=>"<span class=\"corpname\">The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.</span> <span class=\"subarea\">Music Division.</span> <div class=\"address\"><span class=\"addressline\">New York, New York</span></div>"}
- abstract
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{"value"=>"Alexander Lang Steinert (1900-1982) was a composer, conductor, and pianist who worked in television, film, and radio, as well as concert settings. The Alexander Steinert Papers consists primarily of the composer’s collection of published scores, the majority of these arranged for piano and four hands. The collection also contains scrapbooks as well as contracts and correspondence that detail some of the highlights of Steinert’s professional career."}
- prefercite
-
{"value"=>"<p> Alexander Steinert Papers, JPB 06-62. Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.</p>"}
- origination
-
{"value"=>"Steinert, Alexander, 1900-1982", "type"=>"persname"}
- bioghist
-
{"value"=>"<p> Alexander Lang Steinert (occasionally designated, Alexander Steinert, Jr.) was a composer, conductor, and pianist who worked in television, film, and radio, as well as concert settings. Born in Boston, Massachusetts on 21 September, 1900, Steinert came from a musical family. Steinert’s grandfather Morris Steinert, who emigrated from Bavaria, was the founder of M. Steinert & Sons, New England's preeminent piano dealer and the region’s exclusive Steinway representative, and his father, Alexander Steinert, became the Treasurer and General Manager of the company. While the younger Steinert’s brothers, Russell, Robert and Alan, joined the family firm, Alexander, Jr. studied music at Harvard with Charles Martin Loeffler and in 1922 graduated magna cum laude. In 1923 Steinert went on to the Paris Conservatoire where he studied with Andre Gedalge, Vincent d’Indy, and Charles Koechlin. Not only were these among the great musical minds in Paris at the advent of the 20th century, but it is notable that the latter two were exemplars of rival concert societies, the Societe Nationale (SN) and the Societe Musicale Independante (SMI) respectively. As such the young Steinert was among those in the fray of the evolving modern French music scene and this had a profound influence as would become evident in his own compositions. Steinert’s impressionistic tone poem, <span class=\"title\">Southern Night</span>, inspired by the French countryside, won him the American Prix de Rome, from the American Academy in May of 1927. The award consisted of a Frederic A. Juilliard fellowship for three years, with residence and a studio at the academy in Rome, and an annual stipend of $2000. Meanwhile, Steinert’s <span class=\"title\">Southern Night</span> had premiered with the Boston Symphony under the baton of Serge Koussevitzky in 1926, and was performed by the Rochester Symphony in 1928 under Howard Hanson. In June of 1929 Steinert directed the debut, in Rome, of his <span class=\"title\">Two Poems for Soprano & Orchestra</span>, based on the writings of Shelley, and his <span class=\"title\">Leggenda Sinfonica</span> was performed at Augusteo in Rome the following year, 1930. As Steinert’s compositions continued to appear in concert programs both domestically and abroad, he returned to the United States in the early thirties, or shortly after his fellowship in Rome. In 1935 he performed his own <span class=\"title\">Concerto Sinfonico</span> with the Boston Symphony under Koussevitzky; he performed the same piece again in 1939 at the Hollywood Bowl. In December of 1935 he conducted Gershwin’s <span class=\"title\">Porgy and Bess</span> in New York and toured with the production from January through March 1936. On 8 September, 1937, Steinert conducted the Gershwin Memorial Concert at the Hollywood Bowl with the original cast and Lily Pons. In February and March of 1938 Steinert conducted <span class=\"title\">Porgy and Bess</span> on the coast directing its first performances in Los Angeles and San Francisco. From this time on Steinert began to spend more time on the west coast extending his career as a composer and conductor into Hollywood. In 1941 he arranged and conducted the music for Disney’s production of <span class=\"title\">Bambi</span>, and throughout the forties he continued to score films. He was also credited as an actor in a few films appearing as a conductor in <span class=\"title\">Too Young to Kiss</span> (1951), <span class=\"title\">Because You're Mine</span> (1952), and others. In 1945 Steinert received an invitation from Leopold Stokowski, Musical Director of the Hollywood Bowl Symphony, to compose a piece for performance and broadcast, and in August of that year Steinert’s <span class=\"title\">Rhapsody for Clarinet and Orchestra</span> was premiered featuring soloist, Kalman Bloch. The forties through the sixties found Steinert as composer and conductor for numerous radio productions for CBS, NBS, and ABC. In the later fifties and into the sixties Steinert added television credits to his body of work composing and conducting original music for productions such as <span class=\"title\">The Deadly Depths</span> and <span class=\"title\">Tarawa</span> on CBS. From 1961 to 1963 his radio and television music was recorded and published by Boosey & Hawkes. Alexander Lang Steinert died in August of 1982.</p>"}
- scopecontent
-
{"value"=>"<p> The Alexander Steinert Papers consist primarily of the composer’s collection of published scores, the majority of these arranged for piano and four hands. The scores represent prominent Late Romantic composers, especially from France and Russia, along with a few Classical pieces and Operatic overtures by Wagner and Strauss. A few of Steinert’s own compositions are included as well. There is much information about Steinert’s professional career represented in scrapbooks containing newspaper clippings with reviews of Steinert’s works and reports on his enterprise. A small selection of correspondence and contracts details a few professional associations. There are also notebooks in which Steinert had begun to organize a presentation of the highlights of his career. There is little information of a personal nature included in these materials but some information can be gathered from the scrapbooks where some of the newspaper clippings include a note regarding Steinert’s family.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p class='list-head'>The Alexander Steinert papers are arranged in three series:</p>\n<ul class='arrangement series-descriptions'>\n<li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mus/20410#c612088'>Series I: Professional papers</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1920 - 1977</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>This series consists of correspondence and contracts that span Steinert’s career, and various notebooks that Steinert used to collect and organize information regarding details and highlights of his career. There are also notes for changes and corrections to be made to various scores he was working on and notebooks to catalog his personal library of recordings and printed music. The correspondence is comprised almost exclusively of letters addressed to Alexander Steinert, including letters from Eugene Ormandy, Music Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and letters from various affiliations and professional associations. There are just two letters sent by Steinert, these are addressed to his legal counsel in 1951 regarding claims against ASCAP. The contracts folder contains various agreements between Steinert as an independent contractor providing services to various associations principally as a composer, arranger, or conductor. These contracts involve organizations such as Houghton Mifflin, Doubleday, RCA, and CBS. There is also a request from CBS to acquire footage belonging to Steinert, of Gershwin at Fire Island, in Hollywood, and scenes from the rehearsals of the first performance of <span class=\"title\">Porgy and Bess</span>.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mus/20410#c612101'>Series II: Published scores</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1888 - 1963</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Series II represents the bulk of the material in the collection and principally consists of published scores that belonged to Steinert; many of these are autographed. The scores represent the work of prominent composers and composers with whom Steinert studied personally, including Charles Martin Loeffler and Vincent d’Indy, as well as composers, such as Gabriel Faure, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, and Florent Schmitt, representative of both the Paris Conservatoire and the broader community of modern music in Paris in the early 20th century. There are also a number of scores by Russian composers including Balakirev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Liapunov, and Glazunov, as well as major Classical and Romantic composers from Mozart to Brahms, and major opera composers including Wagner and Strauss. The majority of the scores have been orchestrated for piano and four hands; the instrumentation for each piece is indicated in the scope note. Most of the scores are printed in French or German, sometimes paired with Russian. There are also a few of Steinert’s own compositions and two song books from The Hasty Pudding Club, a social group and theater club at Harvard, of which Steinert was a member. Steinert and other members composed the content for the club’s annual musical production and the musical numbers were collected and bound. Many of the books are fragile.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mus/20410#c612238'>Series III: Scrapbooks</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1909 - 1977</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>There are five different scrapbooks each containing newspaper clippings along with some performance programs and there are occasional annotations next to these inserts. Most of the clippings are reviews of performances of Steinert’s works. The books are very fragile and the pages delicate.</p></div></li></ul>\n", "type"=>"arrangement"}
- arrangement
-
{"value"=>"<p> <ul> <li>Series I: Professional papers, 1920-1977</li> <li>Series II: Published scores, 1881?-1963</li> <li>Series III: Scrapbooks, 1909-1977</li></ul></p>", "supress_display"=>true}
- acqinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p> The Alexander Steinert Papers were donated to the Music Division in 1979 by Alexander Steinert.</p>"}
- userestrict
-
{"value"=>"<p>For permission to publish, contact the Chief, Music Division.</p>"}
- date_inclusive_start
-
1888
- date_inclusive_end
-
1977
- relatedmaterial
-
{"value"=>"<p>Isham Memorial Library, Eda Kuhn Loeb Library, Harvard University</p>"}
- keydate
-
1888
- processinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p>Processed by Anders Griffen; Machine-readable finding aid created by Anders Griffen.</p>"}
- extent_statement
-
2.5 linear feet (11 boxes)
- date_start
-
1888
- date_end
-
1977
- date_bulk_start
-
1909
- date_bulk_end
-
1977