Loading...
Creator
Howe, Mary, 1882-1964
Call number
JPB 04-39
Physical description
36.3 linear feet (72 boxes)
Language
English
Preferred Citation

Mary Howe Papers, JPB 04-39. Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Repository
Music Division
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.

The papers of the American composer and patron of music Mary Howe consist primarily of scores, correspondence, biographical material, concert programs and business papers. They also include scrapbooks, photographs and books.

Biographical/historical information

Mary Howe (b Richmond, VA, 4 April 1882; d Washington, DC, 14 Sept. 1964) was an American composer, pianist, and patron of music in Washington D.C., where she grew up and lived all her life. Born Mary Carlisle, she studied piano with Richard Burmeister in Germany and Ernest Hutcheson and Harold Randolph in the United States. She also studied composition with Gustav Strube and graduated with an Artist Diploma in composition from the Peabody Conservatory in 1922. Howe had already begun raising children when she attended Peabody, and she continued to pursue her career while meeting family obligations. She toured in a two-piano team with Anne Hull from 1917 - 1935 and studied with Nadia Boulanger in 1933.

A prolific composer as well as a pianist, Howe worked in many genres: songs for voice and piano, solo piano, piano duo, organ, carillon, violin, cello, flute, chamber music, chorus, ballet, chamber orchestra, and full orchestra, in addition to various combinations of all these; she often reorchestrated the same composition for multiple settings. Her ballet Cards (1936), for example, was set for two pianos, two pianos and orchestra, and chamber orchestra, and her song Le Jongleur de Notre Dame (1959) has scores for two pianos and for orchestra.

Howe created many song settings for poems, including cycles by Goethe (Sieben Goetheliedchen, 1931-1940) and Rilke (Four Poems By Rainer Maria Rilke. Her compositions for orchestra include Stars (1927), Sand (1928), Rock (1954), the suite Potomac River (1940), Agreeable Overture (1948), American Piece (1933) and Castellana (1930). Her orchestral work was performed by the National Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, the NBC and BBC orchestras, and many other orchestras in the United States, Europe and South America. Her compositions were recorded and issued by RCA, Columbia, CRI and the Washington radio station WCFM. Howe’s music was published by Schirmer, Carl Fischer, Composers Press Inc., Galaxy Corporation and Oxford University Press, among others.

Howe and her husband, Walter Bruce Howe, a lawyer, were prominent Washington socialites and were among the co-founders in 1931 of the National Symphony Orchestra; they were close friends of the orchestra’s first music director, Hans Kindler. Howe also helped found the Chamber Music Society of Washington (later the Friends of Music of the Library of Congress) and the Society of American Women Composers. She was active in the National Federation of Music Clubs, the League of Composers and the National Association of American Composers and Conductors. She was also a fellow of the MacDowell Colony and the Huntington Hartford Foundation. Toward the end of her life she was on the board of the National Cultural Center (later renamed the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts).

Sources:

Goss, Madeline. Modern Music-Makers. New York: Dutton, 1952, pp. 71 - 77.

Indenbaum, Dorothy and Carol J. Oja. “Howe, Mary”, Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 18 Apr. 2005), http://www.grovemusic.com

Scope and arrangement

The Mary Howe Papers document in great detail the life and career of an important American composer and patron of music in the city of Washington, DC. They consist of 36.3 linear feet of material dating from 1884 to 1972, with the bulk dating from ca. 1910 to 1964. The Papers consist primarily of scores from every phase of Howe’s compositional life; professional and personal correspondence and writings; biographical material; concert programs and business papers. The collection also contains scrapbooks, photographs and a small set of books.

The Mary Howe papers are arranged in six series:

  • Series I: Scores, Texts and Indexes
    1897 - 1964 and undated
    39.5 boxes

    This series contains work from every phase of Howe’s composing career. It includes both published and unpublished scores and parts, sketches, song texts, and three sets of indexes of her compositions.

    Sub-series 1: Scores, 1897 - 1964 and undated Sub-series 2: Song texts and poems, undated Sub-series 3: Composition indexes, ca. 1940 and undated
  • Series II: Subject files, -
    1911 - 1967 and undated
    8.5 boxes

    This series holds the portion of Howe’s papers that she organized by topic. It consists of personal and professional correspondence, clippings, business papers, promotional material, concert programs and ephemera. The largest portions of the series document the National Symphony Orchestra and its music director, Hans Kindler, mostly in the 1940s. Howe and her husband were highly active in the NSO; they were among its co-founders in 1931 and this series contains significant documentation of the orchestra’s history and of Kindler in particular, including the events leading to his resignation in 1948.

    Howe’s creative career is documented by a set of correspondence and papers documenting her performances with her piano duo partner Anne Hull, as well as by correspondence and papers relating to the two artist colonies she was associated with, the Huntington Hartford Foundation and the MacDowell Colony.

    Other topics documented in this series are the National Federation of Music Clubs, in which Howe was highly active; the Friends of Music of the Library of Congress, which she took part in establishing; and the career of the conductor William Strickland, a friend of Howe’s who conducted and introduced her music in Europe. The series also contains a set of meeting minutes, press releases and preliminary plans for the National Cultural Center (which eventually became the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts).

  • Series III: Papers and Writings
    1884 - 1969 and undated
    16 boxes

    This series consists of the portion of Howe’s papers that she did not organize. It consists primarily of correspondence but also includes personal writings, biographical material and financial and other business correspondence. Notes from Howe’s son Calderon can be found throughout this series. Correspondence dating from after Mary Howe’s death is usually to or from either Calderon Howe or Anne Hull, Howe’s business manager.

    Sub-series 1: Professional, 1912 - 1969 and undated Sub-series 2: Personal, 1884 - 1964 and undated
  • Series IV: Scrapbooks
    1947 - 1964
    6 boxes

    The total of nine scrapbooks in this series contain a mixture of correspondence, photographs, concert programs, clippings and ephemera, and cover the later portions of Howe’s career. The earliest one documents the late career of Hans Kindler with the National Symphony Orchestra, and the 1954 - 1955 scrapbook contains photos and documentation of William Strickland. The 1962 - 1963 scrapbook documents Howe’s surprise 80th birthday concert and includes many photographs. At least one additional scrapbook was dismantled at an undetermined point prior to the final processing of this collection in 2005. The contents of this scrapbook can be found throughout the collection.

  • Series V: Photographs
    ca. 1929 - 1965 and undated
    1 box

    Most of the photographs are color and black and white prints of Howe’s home in Washington, taken in the year after her death in 1964. Printed guides, probably written by Calderon Howe, accompany the photographs. The remainder of the photographs are small images of, among others, Howe, Anne Hull and Hans Kindler. The scrapbooks in Series IV contain many other photographs.

  • Series VI: Books
    1931 - 1972
    1 box

    The books in this series were either inscribed to Howe or contain her annotations. One, by Anne Hull, was given to Calderon Howe in 1972 and contains her remembrances of Howe and Hans Kindler.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Portions donated by Mary Howe in 1964. Bulk donated by Calderon Howe in 1968, with final donations ca. 1991.

Processing information

Processed by Matthew Snyder; Machine-readable finding aid created by Matthew Snyder.

Separated material

  • Sheet Music sent to Music Division
    • De Meyer, Leopold. Marche Marcaine pour le Piano. (Originally belonged to Katherine F. Macleod, aunt of Mary Howe. Privately-bound book. Includes pen transcription of De Meyer’s Grand Etude de Bataille for the Piano Forte.)
    • New Songs and Ballads. (Collection of songs by various composers. Originally belonged to Howe’s mother, Kate Carlisle.)
    • [Untitled collection]. (Privately-bound collection of popular songs for piano, with hand-written table of contents. Originally owned by “R.C. and M.C. Carlisle.”)
    • [Untitled collection] (Privately-bound collection of piano music originally owned by Howe’s mother, Kate C. Thomas (later Carlisle). Composers include L.M. Gottschalk, Fritz Spindler, Franz Liszt, Alfred H. Pease, and others.)
    • [Untitled collection] (Privately-bound collection of art songs for voice and piano, originally owned by Howe’s mother.)
    • [Untitled collection] (Privately-bound collection of art songs for voice and piano, originally owned by Howe’s mother.)
    • [Untitled collection] (Privately bound collection of piano music, originally owned by Howe’s mother.)
  • Books sent to Music Division
    • Butkovich, Sister Mary Virginia. Hans Kindler, 1892 - 1949: A Dissertation. Washington, D.C.: [Self-published], 1965.
    • Wylie, Elinor. Angels and Earthly Creatures. New York: Knopf, 1929.

Related Material

The Mary Howe Recorded Sound Collection, *L(Special) 90-18, Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound. Other Howe materials are held by the Library of Congress.

Using the collection

Location

Music Division
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
40 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023-7498
Third Floor

Conditions Governing Use

For permission to publish, contact the Chief, Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.