Dorothea Flanagan Persichetti scrapbook, Music Division, The New York Public Library
Dorothea Flanagan Persichetti (1919-1987) was a pianist and music educator, and the wife of the composer Vincent Persichetti (1915-1987). The Dorothea Flanagan Persichetti scrapbook, dating from 1925 to 1941, mostly documents the musician’s education and performance career in El Dorado, Kansas.
Dorothea Flanagan Persichetti (1919-1987) was a pianist and music educator, and the wife of the composer Vincent Persichetti (1915-1987). She grew up in El Dorado, Kansas, and started studying piano at age 6. She later expanded to cello, organ, and oboe studies. Flanagan began performing at age 12 and was active as a piano soloist and accompanist, orchestral musician, and organist.
Flanagan moved to Philadelphia in the late 1930s to study at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music, where she and Vincent Persichetti tied in a scholarship competition to study piano with Olga Samaroff. Both studied with Samaroff, as well as with Paul Nordoff. Flanagan and Persichetti married in 1941 and taught at the Conservatory. Vincent departed in 1947 to teach at the Juilliard School, but Dorothea continued to teach theory, analysis, and other subjects at the Philadelphia Conservatory through the 1950s. She eventually earned her doctorate there in 1960. Mrs. Persichetti conducted master classes in piano and theory at other colleges and universities, and maintained a teaching studio at her home. She occasionally performed with her husband, recorded one of his works with him (for piano-four hands), and collaborated with him on books and articles.
Dorothea Flanagan Persichetti’s death in Philadelphia followed her husband’s by about three months.
The Dorothea Flanagan Persichetti scrapbook, dating from 1925 to 1941, documents the musician’s education and performance career in El Dorado, Kansas, as well as her early years in Philadelphia. It holds concert and piano competition programs, clippings, notes of congratulation, diplomas, school grade reports, and letters from music schools to which she applied. Most of the content covers her years in El Dorado, with only a few items dated after 1937.
Unknown.
Compiled by Matthew Snyder, 2014
Received order was maintained. Scrapbook contents were rehoused in two folders.
For permission to publish, contact the Chief, Music Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.