Scope and arrangement
The Sorrel Hays and Marilyn Ries papers, dating from 1950 to 2019, impart mainly Hays' professional career as a composer and Ries' career as a sound engineer and producer. Most of the materials incorporate manuscript and printed musical score drafts, correspondence, contracts, grant proposals, notes, notebooks, and programs generated by Hays' composition and multimedia projects. Ries' sound engineering work is also well represented through sound recordings and sound files for audiobooks, sound effects, educational radio programs, commercial educational recordings, Hays' various recording and multimedia projects, and other music recordings. The collection holds Hays' correspondence with avant-garde composers and Sidney Cowell (wife of Henry Cowell); as well as sheet music and research material from her career as a pianist; and notebooks and correspondence from her training at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and the Hochschule für Musik in Munich, Germany. The small amount of personal correspondence, photographs, Swallow Hollow land documents, and a video recording were primarily created by, or addressed to, Hays.
Although the collection is divided into three series, Hays and Ries collaborated on several projects together. As a result, certain materials overlap across the series.
Ries and Hays annotated the containers of their sound and video recordings. These annotations provide descriptions of the content as well as context of the recordings. Scans of the containers are available from the Music Division; these items in the container list include the note "additional scanned resource available upon request."
The Sorrel Hays and Marilyn Ries papers are arranged in three series:
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1950-2019 [bulk 1975-2000]
This series, spanning from 1950 to 2019, comprises materials from Hays' professional musical training, composition and multimedia projects, organizational affiliations, and various writing assignments. The series reflects the intersection of her personal and professional lives as a feminist activist and artist through her projects and correspondence. Hays' professional career is represented through musical score drafts; her collection of sheet music; correspondence with Sidney Cowell and 20th-century composers; notebooks, address and composition books; day planners; essays on musicians and music; newspaper and magazine clippings; sound and video files; and sound and video recordings.
The series is arranged alphabetically by project or type.
The bulk of the series is comprised of manuscript and printed score drafts; correspondence with lyricists, and individuals and organizations that commissioned Hays' works; concert programs; notes; performer résumés; notebooks; composer explanation and direction pages for musicians and performers; libretto drafts; and some research materials, sound recordings, and photographs from various composition and multimedia projects. There are over ninety projects present in the collection, including the operas Bella (2013-2016), The Bee Opera (2003), The Glass Woman (1989-1993), and Our Giraffe (2006-2008); the radio dramas Dream in Her Mind (1995), featuring eleven actors, six vocalists, and a sampling electronic keyboard; and Mapping Venus (1996-2012), created out of material from Dream in Her Mind; and TOOWHOPERA, A CANTATERA (2009). The projects Southern Voices (1981); M.O.M. 'n P.O.P. (1984), a multimedia performance using music for three pianos; Sensevents (1977); Celebration of NO (1983); and Sound Shadows (1990), a multimedia performance involving music for oboe, didjeridu, keyboard, percussion, and using film, a dancer, an actress, and an audio tape, are well represented in the series. Projects dated after 1985 occasionally hold audio logs, scores for tape, and sound recordings and files created or co-created by Ries.
The sound files and recordings in this series often overlap with Ries' work. Ries often mixed sound files from Hays' composition and multimedia projects with various unrelated projects, thus sound files from Hays' composition and multimedia projects can be found in Series II.
Throughout her career, Hays often reused and revised elements of her composition and multimedia projects; the container list signifies interrelated and altered projects through notes.
Most of the correspondence in the series recounts the early years of Hays' professional career when she was interpreting the works of other 20th-century composers. These letters, dated 1971 to 1989, include correspondence from İlhan Mimaroğlu, John Cage, Tom Johnson, Carlo de Incontrera, Russell Peck, and Morton Feldman. The letters discuss her piano performances and interpretations of their works. Of note is Hays' correspondence with Sidney Cowell about Henry Cowell's music. Hays often interfiled her correspondence with flyers, programs, research articles and interviews, photographs, press clippings, and personal notes.
Hays' collection of 20th-century composer sheet music includes primarily published and a few unpublished scores. Some unpublished scores were sent to her directly from the composer. Hays interfiled the sheet music associated with an individual composer with music catalogs. Some sheet music is annotated. While the annotations indicate that Hays used some of the scores for performances, it is unclear when and where Hays performed individual pieces. The series also carries correspondence from Hermann Steinbeis, a supportive friend whose family Hays often stayed with when she was performing near Brukmühl, Germany. Hays' compositions "Exercises für Bruckmühl I-IV" (1974), Characters (1978), Harmony: harmonie in die bleierne Zeit (circa 1982), and "Lullabye, for Elizabeth Steinbeis" (1979) were written for or dedicated to members of the Steinbeis family. The series also features letters written by school children about Hays' piano performances and a synthesizer demonstration.
The series records Hays' involvement in organizing and advocating for the 1975 and 1976 concert series Meet the Women Composer through correspondence, clippings, flyers, programs, tickets, signed contracts, and a list of the composers. There is correspondence from her work as a coordinator for the First National Congress on Women in Music. Correspondence, legal and financial documents, reports, and meeting minutes disclose her time as the president of Southern Pitch Incorporated.
Hays preserved some drafts and a copy of her essay "Swashbuckler in Exile" on musician Maurice Weddington; a copy of Touching Sound: Living Lullabies (2012, 2016); the educational book, Sound Symbol Structures (1974); compositions and directions written for Silver Burdett Company; as well as various unpublished short stories, essays, poems, and music reviews.
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1975-2012
This series, dating from 1975 to 2012, gives an account of Ries' sound engineering and producing projects through sound recordings and files, as well as a contract with Eclipse Music Group Incorporated. Most of the sound recordings and files are comprised of Ries' edits of animal and natural sound effects recorded from ambient noise in New York City, Swallow Hollow, and on international trips around Western and Northern Europe, and Russia; narration, sound effects, and background music for audiobooks; commercial recordings for feminist and lesbian musicians; and various educational and radio programs.
The series encompasses Ries' mixed, unedited, and edited audio recordings and sound files created for book publishing company, Troll, and others; sound effects company, Sound Ideas; lesbian and feminist musicians, Alix Dobkin and Alive!; easy listening ambient sound and instrumental recording company, Eclipse Music Group Incorporated; Helen Borten's NPR series A Sense of Place and other projects; and Phyllis Dolgin's educational programs and memorial service for her husband, Irving Joseph. There are various recordings by Loretta Goldberg, including edited recordings for the album Zygotones (2000), polka songs by Frank Wojnarowski and Marion Lush, narration recordings by Jacquelyn Reinach, natural sounds by Annea Lockwood, and music recordings for TownHall Records.
The sound files include Ries' mixed and unedited recordings of public radio programs, TownHall Records artists, Grete Sultan's piano recordings, Kay Gardner's albums Moon Circles and Emerging, and interviews about Women with Wings and Women Singing in Sacred Circle. There are also sound files from unidentifiable projects.
While most of the recordings in the series are attributed to Ries, she often collaborated with Hays, particularly on the sound effects and Eclipse Music Group audio recordings. Some of Ries' projects in this series also overlap with Hays' composition and multimedia projects; thus, some sound files are associated with Hays' projects.
This series is arranged alphabetically by last name, publisher, distributor, or type.
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1968-2000
This series, dating from 1968 to 2000, is composed of documents related to Hays and Ries' house near Swallow Hollow Lake, as well as personal correspondence, photographs, and a video recording. Hays and Ries kept letters, cards, and postcards from friends, family members, and lovers. Holiday greeting cards comprise the majority of the correspondence. There are also letters from Hays' mother, Christina Hays; father, John Walter Ernest Hays; younger brother, James Ray Hays; and older brother, John Hays.
The photographs, spanning the 1970s to the 1980s, include candid slides, negatives, digital pictures, and prints from Hays' family and Hays visiting a zoo, wading in a river, and on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Hays also retained some candid pictures shot by her then-boyfriend, Howard Reynolds. There are digital pictures of Christmas ornaments and a créche scene.
The series also features correspondence, legal documents, and a list related to her purchase of land next to Swallow Hollow Lake. The video recording conveys German-American pianist Grete Sultan's ninetieth birthday party.
This series is arranged alphabetically by type or topic.