The Vivian Perlis Collection of Schmitz, Ornstein, Copland, and Kirkpatrick

E. Robert Schmitz (1889-1949) was an influential pianist, teacher, author, and organizer. Born in Paris, he settled in the United States after World War I, and founded Pro Musica, an international organization that promoted new music with concerts, lectures, and publications.

Leo Ornstein was born in Kremenchug, Russia (probably in 1893, although the date is not certain), and moved to New York in 1906. As a young man he quickly established a reputation as a piano virtuoso in the United States and Europe, and his bold compositions were as hotly debated as those of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. After more than a decade of celebrity, Ornstein withdrew from the public eye, and spent the remainder of his long life quietly teaching and composing. He died in Wisconsin in 2002.

Aaron Copland (1900-1990) ranks among the most widely respected of all American composers. Born in Brooklyn to a Russian Jewish family, Copland studied with Rubin Goldmark in New York and Nadia Boulanger in France. His music, which drew upon sources as disparate as jazz, neoclassicism, folk music, and serialism, helped establish an American musical vocabulary, and his most popular works, such as Appalachian Spring and Fanfare for the Common Man, have reached audiences far beyond the concert hall.

John Kirkpatrick (1905-1991) was a notable American pianist, scholar, and teacher, who was best known for performing, cataloguing, and editing the music of Charles Ives.

Vivian Perlis is a prominent historian of American music, and the founding director of the Oral History, American Music project at Yale University. In the course of her research, she worked closely with Leo Ornstein, Aaron Copland, and other notable musicians, and obtained many important documents, which were later acquired by the Gilmore Music Library.