New acquisitions

Rock’s Backpages is one of two new subscription databases now available for use by the Stanford community (Academic Charts Online will be highlighted in a future post).

From the website:

"There are over twenty thousand articles on the site. These feature over two thousand five hundred artists and range from 500-word album (or concert) reviews to 10,000-word interviews and features. 

3. Symphonie / von Gustav Mahler.
Wien : J. Weinberger, [1899?]
Acquired through the Susan & Ruth Sharp Book Fund.

Dritte Symphonie D Moll / von Gustav Mahler.
Wien : Universal-Edition, [19--]
Acquired through the Susan & Ruth Sharp Book Fund.

The first and second editions of Mahler’s third symphony increase the number of source materials for the work in the Memorial Library of Music in the Department of Special Collections, which already included two sketches and a corrected first edition. This copy of the first edition contains extensive manuscript corrections and alterations in a neat hand in red ink throughout, possibly from a member of Mahler’s circle, or of a professional copyist from the publisher Universal. Stanford owns another copy of the first edition which also contains corrections by an unknown source. Mahler is known to have constantly revised his works so that sources such as these may provide significant insight into his process. Besides the two annotated first editions at Stanford, there are other annotated copies at the Internationale Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft in Vienna, which has corrections in Mahler’s handwriting and another hand, the Library of Congress, and New York Public Library. The handwriting in the first Stanford copy and the New York Public copy seem to be similar. We do not fully know what the relationship is between these copies or what the information in them tells us. When one compares the newly acquired first and second editions, it is evident that the corrections and alterations noted in the first edition were made in the published second.

Additional images, with examples of annotations and corrections:

What's the first name you think of when considering the development of electronic music? Edgard Varèse? John Cage? Karlheinz Stockhausen? Now how about computer music? Max Mathews should be at the top of your list. While at Bell Laboratories in 1957, Mathews wrote the program MUSIC, ushering in an era of digital synthesis and composition. MUSIC went through many iterations, but its lasting influence can be seen in contemporary programs such as Max/MSP, itself named after the late pioneer.

Mathews' connection to Stanford is through the Department of Music and the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. Named a Professor of Music (Research) in 1985, Mathews continued pursuing digital sound synthesis techniques until his death on April 21, 2011. Although his recorded output is small, his contribution to the genre is no less important; he rightfully stands side by side with more prominent names on this illustrious compilation featuring the "early gurus of electronic music".  

His archives, which includes papers, digital files, video, and audio recordings, was acquired by University Archives earlier this year by way of Jerry McBride, Head Librarian of the Music Library. Once the finding aid was complete, the Stanford Media Preservation Lab took on the reformatting duties for the media portion. Part of the work will be completed in our lab over the coming month, while the rest will be outsourced to a vendor. 

All of the digital files will be available to the world in the not too distant future. Until then, here's a sample of what to expect.