Subject Guide: Performing Arts

Abraham Ellstein (1907-1963) Papers, P-32

This collection contains Hebrew, Yiddish and English sheet music compositions, programs, playbills, photos, and reviews, with files related to the operas "The Golem" and "The Thief and the Hangman" and the musical "Great to Be Alive." Ellstein was a songwriter, composer, conductor, and director of the American Yiddish theater. He sang at the Metropolitan Opera Children's chorus and was awarded a scholarship to The Julliard School. He was a well-known accompanist to stars of the Yiddish theater. He composed over thirty scores for Yiddish theater and film and more than 500 songs. Ellstein was also involved in Yiddish radio, hosting regular programs on WEVD for Yiddish folk music, theatrical music, and cantorial and liturgical music. He wrote and arranged English music for Broadway, radio, tv, popular music, and films.

Aliza Greenblatt papers, (P-855)

A poet and songwriter, Greenblatt's work was widely published in newspapers in the US and Israel. She published 5 volumes of Yiddish poetry, and her songs were put to music by composers including Abraham Ellstein and Solomon Golub. She was a founder of the Atlantic City chapters of the Zionist Organization of America and Hadassah. She was President of Women's Pioneers. Collection includes published and unpublished works of typed and handwritten manuscripts, bulletins, newsletters, clippings, scrapbook pages, sheet music, correspondence regarding her autobiography, and original letters sent from her husband Isidore when he visited Palestine in 1920. The letters form a portion of her autobiography.

Jewish Music Council collection, I-331

Organized under the the National Jewish Welfare Board, the Council provides cultural programming through music, music reviews, lectures, bibliographies, an annual Jewish Music Festival, and Jewish Week and Month. They created a bridge between Israeli and American Jewish music. Within the collection are articles, lectures, bibliographies, recording reviews, minutes, Jewish Music Festival material, handbooks, activity and progress reports, promotional flyers, programming manuals, a manual on Ernest Bloch's music, and a 1949 Jewish songster.

Papers of Ludwig Satz (1891-1944), P-844

The collections is primarily sheet music written or owned by Satz or Satz's children, concert programs, a catalog from a Grand Street Boys' Association exhibit where his paintings were represented, a play script for Act II of A Farvorfener Vinkel, publicity flyers relating to Satz' Roumanian Village and International Revue, an issue of the Theatre and Art Journal dated April 1926, and two volumes of Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre, with which Satz was involved in publishing

Eric Rau Collection, AR 10550 [Digitized and available online]

An assembly of sound recordings combining traditional synagogue and High Holidays music with Yiddish folksongs. Collected by Eric Rau, a German born chemist and passionate activist for Jewish education.

Heida Hermanns Collection, AR 10183 [Digitized and available online]

Heida Hermanns was a pianist who immigrated to the United States with her husband, fellow musician Artur Holde, in 1937. The collection documents her musical career in Europe and the US from the 1920s-1940s. It mostly consists of correspondence with her mother, Alice Goldschmidt. There are also reviews of her performances, personal documents, and photographs. A few records are devoted solely to Artur, including an unpublished ethnomusicological manuscript and some other music-related material. Together they helped found the Friends of Music, a group that presented chamber music concerts.

Judith Sander Collection, DM 309 [Digitized and available online]

Materials by and about the opera soprano Judith Sander, including original documents, clippings, photographs and sound recordings.

Max Kowalski Collection, AR 7049 [Digitized and available online]

Kowalski was a composer and singer who was also active as a lawyer to many clients, including Arnold Shoenberg. He left Germany in 1939 and immigrated to London, where he died in 1956. The bulk of this collection consists of correspondence with various friends, fellow musicians, and other artists. Also included are concert programs, reviews, biographical articles and obituaries. 

Papers of Eugene Malek, RG 806

Printed and manuscript sheet music including folksongs, oratorios, cantatas, liturgical music, choral works, dance music. Programs, clippings and photographs of Malek.

Leo Low Papers, RG 1140

Low was a composer, arranger, choral conductor, teacher, lecturer; one of the first to collect, arrange, and popularize Yiddish and Hebrew folk and art songs. The Papers contain: correspondence, original musical works and arrangements by Leo Low, printed sheet music of compositions by Leo Low, personal documents. 

Leon Schwartz Papers, RG 1273

The papers consist primarily of printed Jewish music for the violin and manuscripts of music composed or arranged by Schwartz. His repertoire centered on the traditional klezmer string-band style. There are also personal documents, letters, and announcements.

Music Collection, RG 112

The collection consists of published and unpublished works of Yiddish and Hebrew, art, popular, and theater music, Holocaust songs, liturgical and Hasidic music, and instrumental compositions.

Music (Vilna Archives), RG 7 [Digitized and available online]

The collection consists of the manuscripts of instrument parts of Yiddish operettas and musical plays that were part of the Esther Rachel Kaminska Museum of the YIVO Institute in Vilna (from 1927). It includes the works of composers and authors of musical works who were involved in the earliest history of Yiddish theater in Russia and Poland (and formerly Romania).

The Sound Recordings Collection

This collection consists of recordings of music and the spoken word. Included are folk, cantorial, theater, music. It contains some 15,000 78, 45, and 33 rpm discs and cylinder recordings; over 1,000 open reel and cassette tapes; piano rolls, record catalogs and other related ephemera. The earliest item in the collection is a wax cylinder, dating from 1900. The most recent is a 1987 compact disc of klezmer music. There are over 1,000 78 rpm discs including literary readings and theater performances. The series of analog LP records covers both new recordings as well as reissues of classic 78 rpm records.

YIVO Folksong Project, RG 2299 [Recordings are digitized and available online]

This collection consists of an estimated 320 hours of 2,000 folksongs and oral histories from 75 informants who participated in the YIVO Folksong Project directed by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (BKG) from 1973-1975. This collection is a one-of-a-kind, large-scale gathering of oral histories centered around traditional Yiddish music.