The Ricardo Vines Piano Music Collection at the University of Colorado at Boulder

Abstract

Ricardo Vines (1875-1943) was a Catalan pianist who carefully amassed and cared for a substantial library of published and manuscript music. Because he was a leader in premiering new music during years from 1900 to 1930, his library is rich in works from this period. In addition to being remembered for his remarkable technique, Vines is recalled today primarily as a champion of piano works of his French, Spanish, Russian, and South American contemporaries. As noted by John and Anna Gillespie, Ricardo Vines have had a brilliant virtuoso career had he not ardently and actively promoted modern music. . . . Despite an indifferent, sometimes hostile public, Vines waged a lifelong crusade for contemporary music, repeatedly playing new music which no other pianist would even think of performing.1 His music library reflects large number of composers, both well-known and forgotten, who sent their music to pianist in hopes of having it performed. After Vines died in 1943, his music collection-including manuscripts, autograph dedications, and inscriptions-was scattered by his family. The bulk of his library, 836 pieces, was purchased by University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) in mid-1950s. Unfortunately, after purchase it was divided up as a seed collection. The purchase has recently been reconstructed as Ricardo Vines Piano Music Collection and is now located in Howard B. Waltz Music Library. This article provides a brief biographical sketch of Vines, describes history and reconstruction of collection, and highlights its contents. A list of selected holdings in collection describes some of most significant pieces individually, including those bearing inscriptions, dedications, and pianist's markings. Finally, a listing of all composers represented in collection is provided. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF RICARDO VINES Ricardo Javier Vines y Garcia Roda was born in Lerida (Lleida), Spain, on 5 February 1875. In 1885, he became a student of Juan Bautista Pujol in Barcelona. At suggestion of Isaac Albeniz, his mother brought him to Paris to study in 1887, where he enrolled first as an auditor, then as a full-fledged participant in Paris Conservatory class of Charles-Wilfred Beriot.2 There he met Maurice Ravel. The young composers, who were born same year, may have first met through their Spanish-speaking mothers.3 Vines quickly became one of foremost members of Beriot's class, and was invited to perform his teacher's own works-including a February 1893 performance of a piece he identifies only as the second movement of de Beriot's concerto, with composer playing orchestral reduction.4 This was probably second Piano Concerto, op. 46, judging from a heavily fingered copy of an early publication of that work in University of Colorado collection.5 In March 1895, Vines also performed Beriot's Sonata for Two Pianos, op. 61, at Salle Pleyel with Beriot as other pianist.6 Vines was an autodidact-probably a consequence of a pedagogical system in which young students were given little other than a musical education at an institution like Paris Conservatory. He taught himself English (specifically to be able to read Poe in original), mathematics, astrology, palmistry, and any number of other branches of occult sciences. He also read extensively from literature of time, ranging from symbolists including Maurice Maeterlinck, Georges Rodenbach, and Stephane Mallarme; to decadents Jules-Amedee Barbey d'Aurevilly, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Auguste, comte de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam; to Catholic mystics like Ernest Hello; and utterly unclassifiable authors such as Rosicrucian Catholic Josephin Peladan. Vines shared many of his books-notably Aloysius Bertrand's cycle of prose poems Gaspard de la nuit and works of Poe and Baudelaire-with his good friend Mauricio Ravel. In company with Ravel, reading two-piano or four-hand arrangements of orchestral scores, Vines discovered new music from end of nineteenth century, including works of modern Russian composers and symphonic poems of Cesar Franck. …