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Creator
Mayer, William, 1925-
Call number
JPB 17-18
Physical description
4 linear feet (6 boxes, 4 volumes)
Language
English
Preferred Citation
William Mayer papers, JPB 17-18. Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Repository
Music Division
Access to materials
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William Mayer (1925-2017) was an American composer and former trustee of the Composers Recordings, Inc. record label. The William Mayer papers date from 1956 to 2016 and contain scores composed by Mayer, correspondence and meeting minutes documenting his involvement with Composers Recordings, Inc., and clippings.

Biographical/historical information

William Mayer (1925-2017) was an American composer who has worked in multiple genres and a former trustee of the Composers Recordings, Inc. record label.

Born in New York City on November 18, 1925, Mayer was interested in the piano as a child. He briefly attended Yale before being drafted into the United States Army and ending up in U.S. occupied Japan. Mayer returned to Yale in 1947 and committed himself to his passion for music, enrolled at the Juilliard Summer School, and graduated from the Mannes College of Music in 1952.

Bennington College faculty member and trumpeter, Robert Nagel, commissioned Mayer to write a piece for his woodwind and brass ensemble. The result Essay for Brass and Winds was completed in 1954. Subsequent commissions included the children's works The Greatest Sound Around and Hello World (both with lyricist by Susan Otto) and Overture for an American which was requested by the Chautauqua Society to commemorate Theodore Roosevelt's Centennial.

Following these works, Mayer composed many orchestral, choral, and vocal pieces and a ballet based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, which debuted in 1963. Much of Mayer's music has incorporated poems and texts such as those written by e.e. cummings, Langston Hughes, Keats, and A.A. Milne. Other compositions, specifically his Piano Sonata and Octagon reflect Mayer's longstanding affinity for the piano.

During his residency at the MacDowell Colony in 1969, Mayer started working on an opera that would become his most well known work, the award winning A Death in the Family, which debuted at the Minnesota Opera Company in 1983.

Mayer was active with the Composers Recordings, Inc. contemporary classical music record label, as a trustee for 30 years and the recipient of National Endowment for the Arts grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Scope and arrangement

The William Mayer papers are primarily comprised of scores. Many of the scores are published copies, most published by Theodore Presser. Some scores are annotated. For most of Mayer's works, ancillary material in the form of reviews and article clippings about Mayer accompanies the scores unless otherwise noted.

The materials were divided into the following categories by the creator: chamber music, children's music, choral music, dramatic music, early works, orchestral music, piano music, and songs. Within each category the compositions are arranged alphabetically by the work's title.

Box 1 contains biographical information, correspondence and meeting minutes pertaining to Composers Recordings, Inc. (1972-1992) and a few photographs.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Donated by William Mayer, 2017.

Processing information

Processed by Susan M. Kline in 2017.

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