Louise Homer collection

Description data TOP

physdesc

{"format"=>"structured", "physdesc_components"=>[{"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"58.3 linear feet", "unit"=>"linear feet"}, {"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"84 boxes", "unit"=>"containers"}], "supress_display"=>true}

unitid

{"value"=>"JPB 09-3", "type"=>"local_call"}

{"value"=>"18150", "type"=>"local_mss"}

unitdate

{"value"=>"1845-1999", "type"=>"inclusive", "normal"=>"1845/1999"}

{"value"=>"1898-1947", "type"=>"bulk", "normal"=>"1898/1947"}

date_inclusive_start

1845

date_inclusive_end

1999

keydate

1845

unittitle

{"value"=>"Louise Homer collection"}

repository

{"value"=>"<span class=\"corpname\">The New York Public Library. <span class=\"subarea\">Music Division</span></span> <div class=\"address\"><span class=\"addressline\">New York, New York</span></div>"}

prefercite

{"value"=>"<p>Louise Homer Collection, Music Division, The New York Public Library.</p>"}

origination

{"value"=>"Fryer, Katharine Homer, 1907-", "type"=>"persname", "role"=>"Collector", "role_code"=>"col"}

bioghist

{"value"=>"<p>Louise Homer (born near Pittsburgh, PA, April 30th, 1871, died in Winter Park, FL, May 6, 1947), was one of the most gifted and popular opera singers of the early twentieth century. Born Louise Dilworth Beatty, she grew up in a large, religious family that could trace its roots to before the American Revolution (one of her ancestors was the inventor Robert Fulton). She sang in church choirs through her childhood but did not seriously study music until her early 20s, when she was living in Philadelphia and working as a stenographer. She moved to Boston in 1894 to fully commit to a musical life, and was introduced by one of her sisters to the composer Sidney Homer (1864-1953), with whom she began studying harmony.</p> <p>Sidney Homer's family could also trace its ancestry back several generations; he was distantly related to the painter Winslow Homer. Brought up by deaf parents, he studied music in Germany in the mid-1880s before returning to America to compose and teach. He was impressed by Louise Beatty's voice (he later commented that it made him want to write songs), and urged her to pursue vocal studies; he also introduced her to opera, which she had never heard before. Louise would go on to perform and popularize many of Sidney Homer's songs. The couple married in 1895, and subsequently moved to France for Louise to pursue her career.</p> <p>She made her operatic debut in Vichy in 1898, and also performed in Belgium and London before returning to the United States in 1900. There, she began a two-decade career with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, performing under Arturo Toscanini and alongside such artists as Enrico Caruso and Marcella Sembrich. Homer was a contralto, a vocal classification that has fallen out of modern use, but that accurately described her range, with the caveat that she could easily ascend into the mezzo-soprano and sometimes even the soprano range. She was widely admired not only for her beautiful voice but also for her powerful acting and stage presence. Homer sang mainly Italian and French opera, but she could also perform Wagner with ease. Some of her more notable roles were Amneris in Giuseppe Verdi's Aida, Orpheus in Toscanini's 1909 revival of Christoph Gluck's opera, the Witch in Engelbert Humperdinck's Knigskinder, and the title role in Horatio Parker's Mona. When she wasn't performing with the Met, Homer toured the country as a solo recitalist and recorded for the Victor Talking Machine Company (later RCA), for whom she sold an enormous number of records, establishing her as one of the first great classical recording artists.</p> <p>Homer's busy career was all the more remarkable considering that she and her husband raised six children during her most active singing years, and her second and third children were twins. Homer always maintained that her family was her first priority, and that she continued to perform because her husband wanted her to. She took the summers off for the family to spend at their estate, Homeland, on Lake George (they also maintained homes in New York City and Westchester).</p> <p>Homer left the Metropolitan Opera in 1919 to perform with other opera companies in Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. She returned to the Met in 1927, making her last appearance with the company in 1929. The Homers retired to Florida and became associated with Rollins College, where Louise taught vocal students until her death. Homer was also the aunt of the composer Samuel Barber; her older sister, Marguerite, was Barber's mother.</p> <p>The Homer's youngest child, Joy, was noted for having crossed the Japanese blockade of China during World War II to provide humanitarian assistance to the Chinese. (She published a book, Dawn Watch in China, about the experience.) Joy Homer also worked for the Office of Strategic Services in India, where she sustained injuries in a car accident that eventually killed her, at age 31, in 1946.</p> <p>Two members of Homer's family wrote books about her: Sidney Homer published My Wife And I: The Story of Louise and Sidney Homer in 1939, and their daughter Anne Homer published Louise Homer and the Golden Age of Opera in 1973.</p>"}

custodhist

{"value"=>"<p>The Louise Homer Collection was assembled and preserved by Katharine Homer Fryer, daughter of Louise Homer. It was given to The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts by her family, as a lasting remembrance of her lifelong efforts to preserve the legacy of Louise Homer.</p>"}

scopecontent

{"value"=>"<p>The Louise Homer Collection extensively documents the lives and careers of Louise and Sidney Homer, as well as the history of their extended family. It was assembled by Katharine Homer Fryer, one of the Homers' twin daughters. The collection contains correspondence, family papers, music scores, publicity materials, clippings, concert programs, scrapbooks, photographs and posters.</p> <p>The correspondence is exhaustive, revealing a long-term dialog between the Homers and between the Homers and their children, mainly Katharine Homer Fryer. The correspondence also contains several years of letters between the Homers and their nephew, the composer Samuel Barber. Later correspondence in the collection is between Katharine Homer Fryer and her friends, including singers, researchers and collectors, with whom she discussed her mother, her mother's peers and the era she worked in. She also worked with engineers and record labels to re-release her mother's recordings and wrote liner notes to accompany them, which the correspondence also documents.</p> <p>Family papers include diaries, datebooks, passports, publicity material and writings, including the manuscripts for Sidney Homer's My Wife And I and Louise Homer's Notes On Singing (an unpublished set of notes on vocal technique). The papers also contain Beatty and Homer family trees and papers concerning Louise Homer's father and uncle, both clergymen.</p> <p>The clippings, programs and scrapbooks primarily document Louise Homer's performance career from early church choir performances, through her first operatic performances in Europe, and through her long tenure at the Metropolitan Opera and the touring she did as a soloist. They also document her late teaching years at Rollins College in Florida. Sidney Homer's career as a composer is documented in a smaller number of scrapbooks and clippings, as is the performances and writing of Katharine Homer Fryer.</p> <p>Most music scores in the collection are by Sidney Homer, primarily his many songs but also including his instrumental chamber music. Several song manuscripts by Samuel Barber, collected by Katharine Homer Fryer, are also present, as is a set of vocal scores with annotations by Louise Homer.</p> <p>The photographs contain many impressive images of Louise Homer in opera costumes and in publicity headshots, and of Sidney Homer as well, but the bulk of the photographs are informal images of the Homer family and their domestic life.</p>"}

{"value"=>"<p class='list-head'>The Louise Homer collection is arranged in five series:</p>\n<ul class='arrangement series-descriptions'>\n<li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mus/18150#c108698'>Series I. Correspondence</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1880-1999 and undated</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>24.5 boxes</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>This series contains correspondence mainly between members of Louise Homer's family, with the greatest percentage between Louise and Sidney Homer and between the Homers and their daughter, Katharine Homer Fryer. Other family members represented include Samuel Barber (letters mostly between Barber and Sidney Homer), Louise Homer's mother Sarah Fulton Beatty, and small amounts of correspondence from the other Homer children and extended family. (For reference, see the Beatty and Homer family trees in box 34, folder 5).</p> <p>The Homers, as a family, were avid letter-writers. Louise and Sidney Homer wrote to each other often when they were courting and whenever they were apart during their marriage, such as when Louise was on tour. The letters to and from Katharine Homer Fryer span her whole life, beginning with her boarding school days and ending with letters in the 1980s-1990s. Her correspondents at that time included Jeffrey Miller and Edwin Pearson, friends and opera scholars with whom she discussed her mother and her times, as well as discographical issues and the remastering of her mother's recordings. Fryer also discussed the recordings with Tom Owen, a former engineer at the Rogers and Hammerstein division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Other letters are between Louise Homer and her mother and sisters, and between Sidney Homer's older sister and the Homers.</p> <p>After her children grew up Louise Homer took to using a typewriter and carbon paper to create group letters to all her children (see box 20, folder 15), although she continued to write separate letters to Katharine, at least. Regarding business, there is correspondence from the Metropolitan Opera and from the Victor Company (later RCA).</p> <p>Though the series is mainly arranged alphabetically by writer, several special categories of letters to and from Louise Homer appear in box 21. European correspondence, some in French, documents her early career in France, Belgium and London. Several folders of fan letters mainly resulted from two radio appearances, which brought Homer more exposure than she had ever had before, and one folder contains letters in which Homer discussed her recordings and the process of making them.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mus/18150#c108796'>Series II. Family papers</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1845-1990 and undated</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>9.5 boxes</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Most of this series consists of papers of Louise and Sidney Homer. They include address books, appointment books, datebooks and calendars, tour itineraries, honorary degrees, passports, writings, and publicity materials. The writings include the manuscripts and typescripts for Sidney Homer's My Wife And I as well as brief memoirs that Louise Homer wrote for her husband's use in that book; Notes On Singing, a set of notebooks with Louise Homer's notes on vocal technique; Sidney Homer's essays and creative writing on nonmusical topics; and Louise and Sidney Homer's bible-study notes and essays. Other papers include composition lists and publishing information for Sidney Homer's work, and correspondence received and speeches given on the occasion of the Homer's 50th wedding anniversary party in 1945. Publicity material for Louise Homer includes pamphlets, boilerplate biographies, and posters from the Metropolitan Opera and Victor Records.</p> <p>This series also contains the papers of several other members of the Homer and Beatty families, including Louise Homer's father, Reverend William T. Beatty (his sermons and essays), and her uncle, Reverend Samuel Fulton (press clippings of his sermons); Anne Homer Doerflinger (notes and research for her book Louise Homer and the Golden Age of Opera); and papers for Samuel Barber, which include a letter from the U.S. Army to Louise Homer regarding a composition the Army commissioned from Barber, and Barber's personal copy of a silk program from the premiere of his opera Antony And Cleopatra. The Sidney Homer, Jr. papers consist of family trees for the Beattys and Homers, with details on notable family figures.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mus/18150#c108865'>Series III. Clippings, programs and scrapbooks</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1892-1995 and undated</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>10 boxes</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>This series mainly documents the career or Louise Homer, with smaller documentation for the careers of Sidney Homer and their daughter Katharine Homer Fryer (a pianist who accompanied her mother on recital tours).</p> <p>Louise Homer's clippings are extensive and sometimes duplicative of what is in the scrapbooks. These are mainly from the years 1900-1907, which includes the 1906 San Francisco earthquake (the Metropolitan Opera was in the city at the time on tour). Concert programs come both in bound books and as loose programs. Loose programs particularly document Homer's early and late career. The scrapbooks are combinations of newspaper clippings, concert programs, itineraries, repertoire listings and occasional photographs. With one exception (a scrapbook devoted to the Homers' 50th wedding anniversary), the scrapbooks are all devoted to professional work.</p> <p>Sidney Homer's programs and scrapbooks document the performances of his music, particularly those that did not involve Louise Homer. Some clippings also document the performance and writing career of Katharine Homer Fryer.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mus/18150#c108909'>Series IV. Scores</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1879-1968, 1994 and undated</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>14 boxes</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>This series contains Louise Homer's annotated scores in sub-series 1. Sub-series 2 consists mainly of music by Sidney Homer, though it also contains scores by Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mus/18150#c109052'>Series V. Photographs</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>ca. 1850-1983 and undated</div>\n<div class='series-extent'>25 boxes</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>This series consists of professional publicity photographs of Louise and Sidney Homer and a large quantity of photographs and negatives of the Homer family, including some of Sidney and Louise Homer's families and ancestors. It is divided into three sub-series: Louise Homer, Sidney Homer and Family/friends. The family photographs make up the bulk of the series. Some of the photo datings are approximate. See also the scrapbooks in series III, which occasionally contain photographs.</p></div></li></ul>\n", "type"=>"arrangement"}

arrangement

{"value"=>"<p>The Louise Homer Collection are organized in the following series:</p> <ul> <li>Series I. Correspondence, 1880-1999 and undated</li> <li>Series II. Family papers, 1845-1990 and undated</li> <li>Series III. Clippings, programs and scrapbooks, 1892-1995 and undated</li> <li>Series IV. Scores, 1879-1968, 1994 and undated</li> <li>Series V. Photographs, ca. 1850-1983 and undated</li></ul>", "supress_display"=>true}

acqinfo

{"value"=>"<p>Donated by Sarah Liebowitz, daughter of Katharine Homer Fryer, in 2008.</p>"}

processinfo

{"value"=>"<p>Processed by Matthew Snyder.</p>"}

{"value"=>"<p>Processed by Matthew Snyder, 2009.</p>"}

userestrict

{"value"=>"<p>Library policy on photocopying will apply. For permission to publish, contact the Chief, Music Division.</p>"}

relatedmaterial

{"value"=>"<span class=\"archref\">Louise Homer Collection of Vocal Scores, JPF 00-1. Music Division, New York Public Library.</span> <span class=\"archref\">Sidney Homer Manuscripts, JPB 83-299. Music Division, New York Public Library.</span>"}

langmaterial_code

fre

eng

langmaterial

{"value"=>"Some correspondence in French"}

abstract

{"value"=>" The Louise Homer Collection extensively documents the lives and careers of Louise and Sidney Homer, as well as the history of their extended family. It was assembled by Katharine Homer Fryer, one of the Homers' twin daughters. The collection contains correspondence, family papers, music scores, publicity materials, clippings, concert programs, scrapbooks, photographs and posters.", "generated"=>true}

extent_statement

58.3 linear feet (84 boxes)

date_start

1845

date_end

1999

date_bulk_start

1898

date_bulk_end

1947

Update Collection TOP

Update from EAD XML File

Child components TOP

1. Series I. Correspondence [34/1]
2. Series II. Family papers [6/1]
3. Series III. Clippings, programs and scrapbooks [3/1]
4. Series IV. Scores [2/1]
5. Series V. Photographs [3/1]