Stefan Auber papers

1920-1982

The Stefan Auber papers hold concert programs, images, scrapbooks, clippings, scores, promotional material, touring files, posters, and correspondence. The collection primarily documents the cellist's life and career from 1920 until the mid-1960s. Concert programs and images make up the largest portions of the papers.

The programs document solo performances, as well as work with the Kolisch Quartet and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Images, primarily photographs but also including a box of slides, contain solo portraits of Auber; pictures of him with the Kolisch Quartet and the Pittsburgh Symphony (some including Fritz Reiner); and many photos and slides of friends, colleagues, and family, most undated and unidentified. The Pittsburgh Symphony photos contain many informal images taken while on tour in the mid-1950s. Other photographs document Auber's Far East tour with the Little Orchestra Society in 1959. A few later photographs of Auber date from the 1980s.

The scrapbooks, which document Auber's career in Europe before his move to the United States, contain photographs, clippings, and programs. (Additional loose clippings are in the first folder of the collection list.) The scores contain works for solo cello, cello and piano, string quartet, and violin and piano. Composers include Béla Bartók (String Quartet No. VI) and Jerzy Fitelberg. Unless otherwise noted, the scores are manuscripts, some signed or inscribed by the composer, or containing markings by Auber. The scores also hold Auber's sketches and exercise manuscripts.

The promotional material contains resumes, biographies, and clippings. The posters advertise concerts in Germany and the United States, and the touring files contain itineraries, correspondence and contracts. There is a small set of letters in the general correspondence file. It includes a manuscript in German which may be an essay by Auber.