#Music manuscript paper california archive
A key figure in the early days of the archive and the society was Dan Stehman, Professor of Music at Los Angeles Valley College and Roy Harris scholar. Though the organization was short lived, the work of these individuals was significant and helped produce important articles on Harris’s music. Shortly after his death in 1979, the Roy Harris Society was established to raise awareness of Harris’s music and to create interest in financial support of the archive. This is the most fascinating part of the collection, which ranges from sketches of a few bars of keyboard harmony to entire sections of large chamber and symphonic works. In addition to these bound score copies, which include all the symphonies of Harris, are boxes of loose manuscript paper. In these pages, Harris’s process is clear, though some aspects need deciphering, and the development of his language can be traced in a single stave.
Through these annotations, one can see the evolution of his harmonic language and perhaps even the borrowing over time of pre-existing compositions. In the archive is a bound copy of a choral setting of Whitman with re-harmonizations and re-orchestrations notated throughout the score. These annotated documents tell the history of a composer known for not composing any piece without a commission, and often needing to call on previous muses to meet his deadlines. Harris was known to revise many works extensively and even borrow from earlier works. Roy Harris Courtesy of Cal State LA University LibraryĪmong these documents are many scores annotated in the composer’s hand. Johana Harris added approximately 70 linear feet of documents bringing the total to approximately 180 linear feet." 1 In 1973 he donated his papers to the university, which "consist of approximately 3,000 leaves of original manuscripts and sketches, copies of published and unpublished works, 15,000 letters and other memorabilia, commercial and noncommercial recordings of the major portions of Roy Harris's works, and the complete holdings on microfilm of Harris papers owned by the Library of Congress." The same source states, "In 1987, Mrs. After a long and distinguished career as composer and university professor, Roy Harris accepted a position in the music department of CSULA.
Within this latter group of collections is the Roy Harris Collection of Musical Scores and Personal Papers, aka the "Harris Archive." American composer Roy Harris (Leroy Ellsworth Harris, 1898-1979) was born in Oklahoma and at a young age moved to the Southern California region bordering on the campus of CSULA known as the San Gabriel Valley. Kennedy Library of California State University, Los Angeles houses many such collections of materials relating to local and state government, education, science and the Arts.
In this age of the digital download, with journal articles available 24/7 and virtual libraries, the physical or analog archive holds a unique place as one of the most important resources for studying important source material which has not yet been digitized or scanned, giving the researcher a true "feel" for the works.
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