"Infinite Riches in a Little Room": The Music Collections in the Pierpont Morgan Library. Part 1

Abstract

When, in early 1972, I first walked through the wrought-iron gates and passed the rugged bronze doors that secure the East 36th Street entrance to the Morgan Library Annex, I was overwhelmed. A first visit to this august institution can disconcert the unprepared, even discourage the timid from venturing through that portal. And while I am still, a quarter-century later, awed by the capacious East Room with its tiered bookcases, walk-in fireplace, and expansive tapestry (the subject of which is, yes, the triumph of avarice), and am no longer intimidated by the North Room - the smaller but still imposing version of the East Room in which I timorously endured a job interview - I like to think of the library not as the dragon Fafner and readers as needing Siegfried's guileless bravado to win access to its treasures but as a welcoming institution that, with obligatory strictures, makes them available to those who need to see them.(1) I make this point at the outset since there may still be some who regard this library-museum - admittedly an unusual combination - as elitist, its staff aloof, its vaults sacrosanct. It is a private and a personal place, John Russell has written, though one to which we all of us can ask access.(2) And access is usually granted. Use of the collection is open to qualified scholars, musicians, and graduate students, who will first be asked to use copies such as microfilms and facsimiles; if a reader can demonstrate a need to consult the original, it will be made available. All prospective readers are asked to write or call before visiting; new readers will be asked to provide a letter of introduction and photo identification. The library's reading room is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., Monday through Friday, but is closed major holidays and (usually) for the last two weeks in August.(3) This article is laid out as follows: an overview of the major collections; some words about Mr. Morgan's purchases; a detailed account of the offered to Mary Flagler Cary; and surveys of other collections in the library. At the end is a list of the persons whose and letters the library houses. While the emphasis throughout the article is on the manuscripts, noteworthy letters and printed material are mentioned in passing. Mrs. Cary will be the central figure for the simple reason that her collecting is the most thoroughly documented. Most of the purchases made by the Morgans are also recorded, but they did not buy much music; for reasons given below, Dannie and Hettie Heineman's collecting is sometimes difficult to track; and whatever accounts Robin Lehman has kept of his purchases are his own, as is his collection. AN OVERVIEW The collections for which the library has been known for much of this century - early printed books, fine bindings, master drawings, ancient Near Eastern seals and tablets, and illuminated, literary, and historical - were begun by its founder, J. Pierpont Morgan (18371913) and carried on by his son, J.P. Morgan Jr. (1867-1943), known as Jack. Absent from these so-called paper collections (which, in addition to the stone seals, include works on vellum and parchment) are, with a few noteworthy exceptions, and letters. As used here, the term music manuscripts refers to the handwritten from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries that is housed in the Department of Music Manuscripts and Books. The library does own earlier manuscripts, mostly liturgical, that contain - graduals, antiphonaries, and psalters, for example - and other significant documents, such as Las siete canciones de amor by Martin Codax (fl. ca. 1230) and a manuscript of fourteenth-century English polyphonic music. These and other early manuscripts, which are not discussed in this article, are housed in the Department of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, to which inquiries about them should be addressed. …