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Creator
Gauthier, Eva, 1885-1958
Call number
JPB 13-29
Physical description
25.04 linear feet (95 boxes, 3 volumes)
Language
English
Preferred Citation
Éva Gauthier papers, JPB 13-29. Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Repository
Music Division
Access to materials
Request an in-person research appointment.Restrictions apply

Éva Gauthier (1885-1958) was a Canadian-American vocalist best known for her performances of contemporary music and her associations with George Gershwin, Igor Stravinsky, and other composers. The Éva Gauthier papers, dating from 1899 to 1960, document the singer's life and career through correspondence; photographs; writings; programs and publicity material; scrapbooks; published scores; clippings; a short film; and business and legal records. The bulk of the collection consists of Gauthier's collection of published scores.

Biographical/historical information

Josephine Éva Phoebe Gauthier (1885-1958) was a Canadian-American vocalist best known for her performances of contemporary music, as well as her associations with George Gershwin, Igor Stravinsky, and other composers. She was born in Ottawa, Ontario, and began studying piano, harmony, and voice as a child.

In 1902, at age seventeen, she travelled to Europe for further study and to launch her career. She trained in Paris under the voice teachers Auguste-Jean Dubulle and Jacques Bouhy. Gauthier performed as a contralto at first, but expanded her range to include the soprano and coloratura registers, though she became known primarily as a mezzo-soprano.

By 1905, she had toured the United Kingdom and Canada with the famed singer Dame Emma Albani, who publicly endorsed Gauthier as her successor. She toured Europe as a soloist for a few years before her 1909 opera debut in Pavia, Italy. The following year, Gauthier was scheduled to premiere in Britain with the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, but was replaced at the last minute. She resigned from the company and never attempted to perform opera again.

After the Covent Garden incident, Gauthier moved to Java, Indonesia, to live with her future husband, Frans Knoote, with whom she had a son named Evan. She stayed for four years, learning the music of Java and studying with a Gamelan orchestra (Gauthier may have been among the first classically trained western artists to do so). She also toured other countries in the region and performed recitals in China at a time when western classical music was rarely heard there.

Gauthier left Indonesia for New York when the First World War started. She began performing annually at Aeolian Hall, and a recital there in 1917 proved to be her breakthrough. She sang works of Stravinsky and Ravel, after which Stravinsky chose Gauthier to debut all his concert vocal compositions; she quickly became known for her associations with contemporary composers, who regularly submitted new works for her to perform.

Through the 1920s, Gauthier toured North America and Europe with a piano accompanist (usually Celius Dougherty), and occasionally performed with orchestras. She became attracted to jazz at that time, and in November 1923, at her annual Aeolian Hall recital, became the first classical musician to perform songs of Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and George Gershwin (accompanied by the composer). The program also included music by Schoenberg, Milhaud, Bartók, and Hindemith, and proved to be historic; it directly led to Gershwin's own premiere at Aeolian Hall a few months later, when he debuted his Rhapsody in Blue with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra.

Gauthier took a hiatus from performance in the late 1920s because of health and financial issues, but resumed her career from 1931 to 1937, after which she retired to concentrate on teaching private students and giving master classes. She maintained a presence in the arts and music scene of New York, attending performances of her students and other vocalists; she was also a founding member of the American Guild of Musical Artists, and served on its board of governors.

In her final years, Gauthier wrote articles about her life and career for The Musical Record and Musical Courier, and also wrote for radio. She died in New York on December 20, 1958.

Scope and arrangement

The Éva Gauthier papers, dating from the 1890s to 1960, document the singer's life and career through correspondence; photographs; scrapbooks; writings; programs and publicity material; published scores; clippings; a short film; and business and legal records. The bulk of the collection consists of Gauthier's collection of published scores. The rest of the files focus primarily on her professional life, though some personal photographs and letters are present.

The Éva Gauthier papers are arranged in two series:

  • Series I: Personal and Professional Files
    1890s-1960

    Gauthier's files, dating from 1899 to 1960, document her life and career through correspondence; photographs; scrapbooks; writings; programs and publicity material; clippings; business and legal records; a short silent film; and a decorative box which originally held some contents of the collection.

    Correspondence dates from 1900 to 1959, and comprises about half of the series. It is in three divisions: family and friends; individuals; and organizations. The latter two hold letters regarding Gauthier's career and business. Notable individual correspondents include Dame Emma Albani, Ernst Bacon, David Bispham, Arthur Bliss, Jacques Bouhy, Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, Alexander Calder, John Alden Carpenter, Pablo Casals, Aaron Copland, Noël Coward, Frank and Walter Damrosch, Claude Debussy, David Diamond, Celius Dougherty, Olin Downes, George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, Percy Grainger, Ernest Gye, W.L. Mackenzie King, Serge Koussevitzky, Walter A. Kramer, Otto Luening, H.T. Parker, Maurice Ravel, Claire Reis, Marcella Sembrich, Albert Stoessel, Leopold Stokowski, Virgil Thomson, Carl Van Vechten, Alec Wilder, and Thornton Wilder. Organizational correspondents include the Bohemians, the Canadian Government and Embassy, the Institute of International Education, the Juilliard School, the Music League of America, Musical America, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Philharmonic Society of New York, and Simon and Schuster (regarding Gauthier's proposed memoir).

    Photographs consist of two family photo albums dating from 1900 to 1916, and over 350 loose photographs dating from the 1890s to the 1950s. These include over 250 formal and informal portraits of Gauthier dating from the 1910s to the 1920s, some by Carl Van Vechten. About 100 photographs of other musicians or family members are also present. The portraits range in size up to 10 inches by 14 inches. The two albums of family photographs were microfilmed and cataloged under classmark *ZB-3190.

    The four scrapbooks, all of which are fragile, contain clippings, programs, and letters documenting the course of Gauthier's career from 1905 to 1920.

    Gauthier's writings date from 1899 to 1948. They contain notes regarding her proposed memoir; historical essays on composers such as Gabriel Fauré, Erik Satie, Aaron Copland, Ernst Bacon, Samuel Barber, Virgil Thomson, and Howard Swanson; radio scripts; program notes; lectures; repertoire lists; address books; datebooks; and her diaries, which date from 1899 to 1912.

    The programs and publicity materials date from the 1914 to 1937, and feature Gauthier's Aeolian Hall recitals, along with many other performances in North America and Europe. The clippings date from the 1920s to the 1950s.

    Business and legal records date from 1902 to 1960. They hold performance and recording contracts, financial records, records of the Éva Gauthier Foundation, passports, and Gauthier's divorce papers. They also include meeting minutes of the Éva Gauthier Society for Contemporary Song, which was founded after Gauthier's death.

    The silent film is titled Eva Gauthier on the Ship Augustus -- 1919 Fashions of the Day.

  • Series II: Published Scores

    Gauthier's published scores contains a huge variety of music for piano and vocalist that demonstrates Gauthier's vast repertoire, musical interests, and versatility. The scores include work by composers from the Western canon such as Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Debussy, and Fauré, as well as by 20th century composers, including Henry Cowell, Carlos Chavez, George Gershwin, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, Charles Ives, Elliott Carter, Paul Hindemith, Béla Bartók, Ned Rorem, and John Duke. Also present is music by many lesser-known composers, as well as arrangements of traditional songs. Most of the scores are not annotated. Although the vast majority of the music is published, there are manuscripts present from some composers (none well-known), or for arrangements of traditional songs (the arranger unidentified). A set of compositions, titled "A Garland of Songs for Éva Gauthier," was compiled by an unidentified friend.

    The scores were originally cataloged before being united with the rest of the collection. The original catalog cards (one for each score) are available as an additional resource to this finding aid.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Donated by the estate of Éva Gauthier in 1959.

Revision History

The separate collections of Gauthier's papers and scores were united into one collection in (2025.)

Processing information

Processed by Matthew Snyder in 2013, 2019, and 2025.

The collection was originally processed by the Music Division at an unknown date, and the original order removed. The correspondence was filed alphabetically, the scores cataloged, the photographs filed separately, and the programs and some correspondence were not processed. With the exception of the scores, all collection contents were processed and reunited in 2013. Published scores were processed into a separate collection in 2019. Both collections were united in 2025.

Related Material

Collection relating to Éva Gauthier, 1947-1966. JPB 91-110, Music Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

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

Access restrictions

Inquiries regarding video material in the collection may be directed to the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound (recordedsound@nypl.org). Video material will be subject to preservation evaluation and migration prior to access.

Additional resources