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Frederick R. Koch collection

 Collection
Call Number: GEN MSS 601

Scope and Contents

The Frederick R. Koch Collection consists of musical, literary, and historical materials collected by Frederick R. Koch (Yale School of Drama, 1961 MFAD), principally through purchases at public auctions, 1979-1986. Including individual items, concentrations of related materials, and several extensive archives, the collection is a broad and deep resource for study of the lives and works of a range of composers, authors, and other historical figures.

Most materials are music manuscripts, literary manuscripts, drawings, and correspondence of European, English, and American composers, authors, and artists. Also present are historical manuscripts, photographs, albums, and other papers. While the contents of the collection span the seventeenth to twentieth centuries, most date from the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, with particular strengths in French, Italian, German, and British music, French literature, and British art.

The collection is organized alphabetically by name. Within each name, materials are organized under one or more of the following subheadings: Correspondence, Music, Writings, Drawings, and Other Papers. Bound and oversize materials are listed under the appropriate subheading but stored in one of the following shelving locations: volumes, volumes shelved flat, oversize volumes, folders shelved flat, oversize folders, or broadsides.

Correspondence is present for most names represented in the collection, and consists of outgoing letters arranged by name of recipient, unless otherwise noted. Within each recipient, correspondence is arranged chronologically.

Music is suborganized alphabetically by work title and arranged chronologically within each work. Folder titles identify the part of the work represented, if less than the full work, and the version of the work, type of composition, and medium of performance, if these are not clear from the work title. Arrangements of music by others and unidentified music, if present, are listed at the end of each composer's music. Unless otherwise noted, music is in the composer's holograph and score format is full score.

Among composers represented are: Hector Berlioz (Roi Lear, other music, letters); Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, Baron Berners (The Triumph of Neptune); Georges Bizet (letters to the Halévy family and others); Luigi Boccherini (Quintets, piano, strings, G. 413-418); Johannes Brahms (Alte Liebe and choral music); Claude Debussy (Pelléas et Mélisande, other music, letters to Rosalie Texier and others); Henri Duparc (songs); Manual de Falla (music, letters to Georges Jean-Aubry and others); Gabriel Fauré (songs, chamber music, letters); César Franck (Les béatitudes, other music); Charles Gounod (Le médecine malgré lui, George Dandin, other music, letters); Reynaldo Hahn (music, diaries, letters); Fromental Halévy (letters, music); George Frideric Handel (church music composed in Rome, 1707, in copyist's manuscript); Ruggiero Leoncavallo (extensive opera manuscripts, letters); Franz Liszt (letters, music); Pietro Mascagni (operas, cantatas, letters to family); Jules Massenet (letters, extensive music including operas, oratorios, orchestral music, and songs); Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (piano part for Concerto, piano, orchestra, no. 2, op. 40, D minor, songs and choral music, letter to Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, letters to others); Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Gavotte, orchestra, K. 300, B-flat major); Jacques Offenbach (extensive opera manuscripts, including Les contes d'Hoffmann, other music, letters); Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (La fenice sul rogo); Francis Poulenc (Les biches, Banalités, other music, photographs, letters to Pierre Bernac, Georges and Nora Auric, and others); Giacomo Puccini (opera fragments, family correspondence, letters to Angelo Magrini, Alfredo Vandini, and others); Maurice Ravel (music, letters to Roland-Manuel, the Godebski family, and others); Ottorino Respighi (songs, transcriptions, other music, letters); Camille Saint-Saëns (The Promised Land, other music, letters to Émile Renaud and others); Erik Satie (Parade, other music, letters); Franz Schubert (Fantasie, piano, 4 hand, D. 940, F minor, songs); Richard Strauss (songs, letters, photographs); Igor Stravinsky (Baika, piano music); Giuseppi Verdi (libretto for Ernani, more than 200 letters to Opprandino Arrivabene, Francesco Maria Piave, and others); Richard Wagner (libretti for Lohengrin and Götterdämmerung, songs, letters); William Walton (nearly complete music archive); Carl Maria von Weber (letters to Gottfried Weber); Hugo Wolf (songs, letters); and Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (extensive operas, other music, letters).

Writings are arranged alphabetically by work title, followed by unidentified material. Most writings are by literary authors; also present are writings by musicians and others. Unless otherwise noted, manuscripts are in the author's holograph.

Authors include W. H. Auden (early letters); William Beckford (letters to George Clark); Jean Cocteau (extensive letters, manuscripts, drawings); Noel Coward (complete diaries, fragments of other writings); Alphonse Daudet (L'Arlésienne); Jean Genet (Les bonnes, other writings); Henry James (letters to many correspondents); Edward Lear (A Book of Nonsense, other writings, letters); Anita Loos (fragments of an unidentified play, letters); Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer); A. A. Milne (When We Were Very Young, letters); Marcel Proust (fragments and proofs for A l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs and Le côté de Guermantes, other writings, letters to Reynaldo Hahn, Daniel Halévy, Jeanne Weill Proust, and many others); Arthur Rimbaud (letters to family); Paul Verlaine (letters, poems, other writings); and Oscar Wilde (letters, poem, and typescripts of De Profundis).

Drawings, consisting of works in pencil, pen-and-ink, and watercolor, are arranged alphabetically by title or subject. Artists include Edward Coley Burne-Jones (early drawings, letters to Cormell Price and others); Jean Cocteau (drawings); Palmer Cox (illustrations for Brownie Calendar); Robert Kastor (drawings of musicians); Edward Lear (illustrations for A Book of Nonsense and other drawings); Beatrix Potter (illustrations for Lear's "The Owl and the Pussy Cat"); Ernest H. Shepard (illustrations for Milne's When We Were Very Young); other children's literature illustrators; and cartoonists who contributed to Punch.

Other Papers consist mainly of photographs, ephemera, historical documents, and albums. Historical documents and correspondence include materials relating to Frederick II, King of Prussia; George IV, King of Great Britain; Léopold I, King of the Belgians, Charlotte Augusta, Princess of Great Britain, and Louise-Marie of Orléans; Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, and Empress Eugénie; and Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, and Empress Carlota. Albums assembled by Johann Huldreich Augenstein, Sir Granville Bantock, Valentine Hugo, and Sir James Emerson Tennent contain autographs, inscriptions, drawings, and literary and music quotations contributed by authors, musicians, and artists. Other albums contain correspondence, literary fragments, and other documents pertaining to Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, and Napoleon III. Names of prominent contributors to albums are listed in folder notes.

While most of the collection consists of single items with individual provenance, materials listed under the following names comprise small collections of personal papers: H. Richard Boehm (most about Evelyn Nesbit and the murder of Stanford White); August Jilek (about Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, and Empress Carlota); Robin Maugham (about W. Somerset Maugham and the Maugham family); William Meredith (about James Ingram Merrill); Rollo H. Myers (most about his writings on music); and Louis Robin (about Francis de Croisset). Arrangement of these small collections generally conforms to descriptions in the Giroud Catalogue; exceptions are indicated by "see" references.

For more information about the collection, and detailed content description, physical collation, historical context, and provenance of individual items, see:

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. A Catalogue of the Frederick R. Koch Collection at the Beinecke Library, Yale University. Edited by Vincent Giroud. New Haven: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 2006.

Giroud, Vincent. Heinrich Schütz to Henry Miller: Selection from the Frederick R. Koch Collection at Yale University. New Haven: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 2001.

Dates

  • 1640 - 1983

Creator

Language of Materials

Materials chiefly in French, English, German, and Italian.

Conditions Governing Access

The materials are open for research.

Boxes 358-362: Restricted fragile material. Reference surrogates have been substituted in the main files. For further information consult the appropriate curator.

Conditions Governing Use

The Frederick R. Koch Collection is the physical property of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. For further information, consult the appropriate curator.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Deposited by the Frederick R. Koch Foundation, 1996. Gift of the Frederick R. Koch Foundation, 2001. Gift of Frederick R. Koch (Yale 1961 MFA), 2001.

Extent

65.12 Linear Feet ((368 boxes) + 1 art, 4 broadside)

Catalog Record

A record for this collection is available in Orbis, the Yale University Library catalog

Persistent URL

https://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/beinecke.frkoch

Additional Description

Abstract

The Frederick R. Koch Collection consists of musical, literary, and historical materials collected by Frederick R. Koch, principally through purchases at public auctions, 1979-1986. Including individual items, concentrations of related materials, and several extensive archives, the collection is a broad and deep resource for study of the lives and works of a range of composers, authors, and other historical figures.
Most materials are music manuscripts, literary manuscripts, drawings, and correspondence of European, English, and American composers, authors, and artists. Also present are historical manuscripts, photographs, albums, and other papers. While the contents of the collection span the seventeenth to twentieth centuries, most date from the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, with particular strengths in French, Italian, German, and British music, French literature, and British art.

Processing Information

In 1996, a preliminary finding aid for the Frederick R. Koch Collection was derived from information supplied by the Koch Foundation and other sources. At that time the collection was organized by name, and materials were identified by box, range, and section shelving locations. The preliminary finding aid consisted of brief descriptions of manuscript and printed materials, with accession numbers assigned by the Koch Foundation (FRKF [#]). In 2006, descriptions in the preliminary finding aid were superseded by A Catalogue of the Frederick R. Koch Collection, edited by Vincent Giroud (New Haven: Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 2006). The Catalogue provides detailed item-level descriptions, with original FRKF numbers.

This finding aid represents full processing of manuscripts in the Koch Collection. Organization by name has been refined, materials have been reorganized within each name, and major names and work titles have been standardized in conformance with the Library of Congress Authority File. The collection has been rehoused, with new box and folder numbers superseding former box, range, and section numbers. Brief folder titles, notes, and dates are derived from full descriptions in the Giroud Catalogue. Supplied dates in the Catalogue were used in determining chronological arrangement of undated correspondence, and these dates have been penciled on individual letters. "See" references have been provided for the few name and work title forms that differ substantially from the Catalogue.

All materials are identified in this finding aid by FRKF number in a heading note or folder note. For folders representing multiple FRKF accessions, numbers are listed individually, with the exception of consecutive decimal numbers, which are listed as spans. FRKF numbers represented in the collection span 1-1433; three numbers within this span are not used (795.22, 1200.44, and 1432).

Published music and books in the Koch Collection are now cataloged individually in the Library's online catalog and are therefore not listed in this finding aid. Correspondence and other manuscripts tipped into published music and books are described in local notes in the individual catalog records for those materials. All components of the collection may be found in the online catalog by a keyword search on the phrase "Frederick R. Koch Collection".

In 2013, the following materials were added to the finding aid: Jean Cocteau, "Profile jaune"; and Rex Whistler, Illustrations for Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels. These materials do not have FRKF numbers.

In 2015, the following item was added to the finding aid: Camille Saint-Saëns, The Promised Land, Storage box of a former owner.

Subjects

Finding Aid & Administrative Information

Title
Guide to the Frederick R. Koch Collection
Status
Under Revision
Author
by Karen Spicher
Date
July 2008
Description rules
Beinecke Manuscript Unit Archival Processing Manual
Language of description note
Finding aid written in English.

Repository Details

Part of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Repository

http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/
Contact:
P. O. Box 208330
New Haven CT 06520-8330 US
(203) 432-2977

Location

121 Wall Street
New Haven, CT 06511

Opening Hours

Access Information

The Beinecke Library is open to all Yale University students and faculty, and visiting researchers whose work requires use of its special collections. You will need to bring appropriate photo ID the first time you register. Beinecke is a non-circulating, closed stack library. Paging is done by library staff during business hours. You can request collection material online at least two business days in advance of your visit, using the request links in Archives at Yale. For more information, please see Planning Your Research Visit and consult the Reading Room Policies prior to visiting the library.

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