The Lowell Mason Papers

The Lowell Mason Papers contain holograph, manuscript, and printed music by Lowell Mason and others, correspondence, programs, clippings, writings, biographical information, and memorabilia, mostly from the period between 1830 and 1870. There are well over 200 hymn-tunes, songs, rounds, and sketches composed or arranged by Mason, many of them in his hand. The journals from Mason's two trans-Atlantic trips elucidate his relationship with his European contemporaries in education and composition. The largest series in the Papers is correspondence. There are about 350 letters, approximately 145 of them by Mason. These include correspondence with such people as Horace Mann, Hans Georg Nägeli, Sigismund Neukomm, and William Channing Woodbridge.

The Lowell Mason Papers include some items from the Mason family's initial gift of the Lowell Mason Library in 1873. These consist of some printed and manuscript music by Lowell Mason and others, programs, and writings by Lowell Mason.

The remainder of the Papers came from several sources. On 17 March 1968 Mrs. William Endicott (née Helen Mason, daughter of Henry Lowell Mason) gave Yale the three-volume typescript of her father's biography and sixteen letters from Horace Mann to Lowell Mason dating from 1844 to 1855. In 1972 Mrs. Elizabeth Mason Ginnel (Henry's niece, daughter of Edward Palmer Mason) gave Yale the portrait of Lowell Mason that now hangs in the Librarian's office, and in 1975 she donated a photograph of Mason's birthplace. Five letters were purchased from Goodspeed's Book Shop in 1970, and one was purchased from Midland Rare Book Company in 1961. Finally, the biographical information in series VI consists mostly of items transferred from the Music Library's general collection.

A series in the Papers is provided for the papers of Lowell Mason's son, William Mason (1829-1908). This series includes published piano music composed or arranged by William Mason, correspondence (1898-1936), clippings, and miscellaneous items. The source of these items is undetermined.

Much of the correspondence, two of Mason's diaries, journals from his European trips, clippings, photographs, and the holograph music by Mason, are a gift from the estate of his grandson, Henry Lowell Mason, in 1970. He used these items as material for a biography of his grandfather, which he worked on from 1909 until his death in 1957. A sub-series in the correspondence is apportioned to Henry Lowell Mason's correspondence concerning his biography.

Additional Lowell Mason correspondence acquired after 1982 has been cataloged separately in the Gilmore Music Library's Miscellaneous Letters Collection.

It is important to distinguish the Lowell Mason Papers from the larger assemblage known as the Lowell Mason Library or Collection. The Mason Library consists of a gift of approximately 10,300 items from the Mason family to Yale in 1873, the year after Mason's death. Its treasures became the core of the impressive rare book collection in the Gilmore Music Library today. The Mason Library includes manuscript and printed music, theoretical treatises, hymnals and other sacred music, hymnological studies, school songbooks, periodicals, and pamphlets. The dates of these items range from the late sixteenth century to 1870, with the bulk of them originating between 1750 and 1850. Between 1874 and 1877, Joel Sumner Smith produced a handwritten catalog and shelf list of the Mason Library. These may be consulted at the Gilmore Music Library, or purchased on microfilm. Many items from the Mason Library also appear in either Orbis (Yale's online catalog) or the Music Library's manuscript card catalog.

The Mason Library was initially deposited in the Yale Divinity Library. After the establishment of the Music Library, most of it was transferred, but certain items remain in the Divinity Library, notably hymnals that contain text but not music.