Gifts.

The gifts to the music division during the year num- ACCESSIONS: bered 1,084 (against 720 the year before). This represents the number of items given, not the number of givers. In some cases a gift comprises more than a hundred items. All gifts have been gratefully acknowledged; only a few can be singled out here. The music division has received:

From the president of the Aeolian Co., H. B. Tremaine, Esq., the unusual and most useful gift of a small, soundproof room, fully installed, which now occupies the space in the stacks formerly partitioned off for readers desiring to use the piano. This much-appreciated improvement fills a long-felt want. The specifications submitted by the contractors, Van Veen & Co., of New York, were duly approved by the Architect of the Capitol.

From the widow of Frederic Ayres [Johnson], all the manuscripts left by the composer at his untimely death November 23, 1926; they include a number of unpublished works, such as an orchestral overture (From the Plains), a string quartet, a sonata for violin and piano, an elegy for violoncello and piano, numerous songs, and a large quantity of sketches. Frederic Ayres was born. in Binghamton, N. Y., in 1876; he had studied with Edgar Stillman Kelley and Arthur Foote. His compositions are distinguished by polished workmanship and utter absence of all meretriciousness; his deep and sensitive musicality placed him in the front rank of native American composers.

From the Beethoven Association in New York the sum of $500 as a second gift (the first, of $1,000, was made in 1925)-voted at the association's annual meeting April 23, 1927, with the intention that the money be similarly used in the purchase of especially significant material.

From Bern Boekelman, Esq.-the veteran pianist and composer who for many years was associated with the Farmington and Briarcliff Schools-164 volumes and pieces of piano music, including some first and early editions of Haydn and Mozart, as well as first editions of characteristic pieces by Rubinstein, Thalberg, Heller, and others, belonging to the virtuoso repertoire of a brilliant school of the past.

From Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge (A. M. h. c., Yale, 1927), as additions to her previous gifts of manuscripts, the holographs of the following compositions: Franco Alfano, sonata for violoncello and piano; N. Berezowski, theme and fantastic variations, Op. 7, for clarinet, string quartet, and piano (first performed at the Library of Congress, October 8, 1926); Henry F. Gilbert, string quartet; G. Francesco Malipiero, "La nave della vittoria (Ricercari No. 2) for 11 instruments, and "Primo tempo" for violoncello and piano; Gabriel Pierné, sonata da camera, Op. 48, for flute, violoncello, and piano (to the memory of Louis Fleury); and several others. Mrs. Coolidge's gifts include a number of " dedication" copies offered to her by many prominent composers, and a set of the complete works of Claudio Monteverdi, now in course of publication under the editorship of G. Francesco Malipiero. During the year Mrs. Coolidge has made the following additional gifts of money: Three thousand dollars toward the payments for the organ in the auditorium of the Library (given by her in 1925); $1,000 for minor constructional changes in the auditorium; $3,000 toward the planting and embellishment of the inner court adjoining the auditorium. It should not be forgotten that this munificent patron and competent artist gave her services in a concert of chamber music at the Library of Congress, at which she played the piano part of the Brahms Quartet, in A, Op. 26, with members of the Lenox String Quartet. Another special gift from Mrs. Coolidge made possible the series of six Beethoven concerts, April 18-22, by the London String Quartet, at which all of Beethoven's string quartets and the Fugue, Op. 133, were played in commemoration of the one hundredth anniversary of the composer's death, March 26, 1827.

From Miss Rebekah Crawford, New York, further installments of her large collection of music and portraits of musicians. Miss Crawford's interest in the division is as great as is her patience in the preparation of special material, such as a valuable scrapbook containing American and European articles, programs, etc., relating to the Beethoven centenary.

From Robert W. Gordon, Esq., the complete file of his department “Old songs that men have sung," published

in the Adventure Magazine between July 10, 1923, and August 23, 1926, with an unusually rich selection of hitherto unprinted songs of the sea, lumber camps, Great Lakes, the West, and similar folk ballads.

From the Oxford University Press, London, through the manager of its music department, Hubert J. Foss, Esq., the manuscript orchestra score of Gustave Holst's ballet, "The Golden Goose," signed by the composer and containing several sections in his handwriting.

From O. G. T. Sonneck, Esq., the pencil manuscripts of his two recent books, "The Riddle of the Immortal Beloved" and "Beethoven Letters in America," these papers taking their place with a great deal of similar material which the former chief of the division had previously given to the Library.

From Messrs. Steinway & Sons, New York, the continued loan of an upright piano for the use of readers in the division engaged in research and reference work.

From Mrs. Rose Fay Thomas, the widow of Theodore Thomas, 76 volumes and notebooks containing almost all of the more than 10,000 programs given by her husband and his orchestra in New York, Chicago, at the festivals in Cincinnati, and on tour; most of the entries are in the conductor's own handwriting. Furthermore, Mrs. Thomas has given to the division the tuning fork, sounding the "official international pitch, A=435," which was expressly made for Mr. Thomas by Messrs. Valantine & Carr, of Sheffield, England. This "international" pitch, by 9/16 of a tone lower than the pitch formerly adhered to in America, was adopted by Thomas in 1882, to conform with the standard pitch then accepted by most of the European countries. In referring to this drastic and far-reaching change, Mrs. Thomas, in her "Memoirs of Theodore Thomas," wrote that "no other single act of his life illustrates so well how intimately Thomas was associated with the musical life of the whole country."

From the Victor Talking Machine Co., Camden, N. J., in exchange for an older model (given in 1925), the latest type of "orthophonic" machine in a handsome walnut case, together with over a hundred double-face disks of the new electric recording.

PURCHASES:

Schumann

holograph.

It is most gratifying that, upon solicitation, several orchestras in the United States have given the obtainable back numbers of their program books and have consented to supply their current issues. The division now regularly receives the program books of the following symphony orchestras: Boston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York Philharmonic, New York Symphony, Omaha, Philadelphia, Rochester, Seattle, and Syracuse.

Undoubtedly the year's most valuable acquisition—in both the material and the ideal sense-is the holograph score of Robert Schumann's "Spring Symphony" in B flat, Op. 38. It is written with pen and ink in the composer's hand, and prefixed to it are his pencil sketches for the entire work (in form of a piano reduction), all bound together in the original cardboard cover. It was acquired at the first sale of the Heyer collection, in December, 1926, with the aid of a thousand dollars given to the music division by the Beethoven Association of New York. (See the Librarian's report for 1925.) The inscription on the title-page of the sketches reads: "Frühlings Symphonie. 23-26 Januar 1841. Leipzig. 1. Frühlingsbeginn, 2. Abend, 3. Frohe Gespielen, 4. Voller Frühling." Over the first page of the full score is written : "27 Januar 1841, Frühlingssymphonie." At the end of each movement the date is given when the scoring was finished; thus the end of the first movement has February 4; the second, February 6; the third, February 13; and at the end of the last movement are the words: "Beendigt am 20sten Februar 1841. Leipzig. Robert Schumann." The conception of the entire symphony took four days and the scoring of it less than four weeks. But the innumerable corrections in the score-many of them made after the first performance-bear witness to the pianist Schumann's wrestling with the unfamiliar problems of the orchestra.

In binding, the volume was provided with two preliminary leaves; on the first of them Schumann listed some 50 performances of the work between 1841 and 1852, in Germany and other countries, with the dates and the names of cities and conductors. The first perform