John Curwen Manuscripts
John Curwen (1816-1880) was an English congregational minister who taught himself to read music from a book by Sarah Glover that introduced to him the idea of "Tonic Sol-fa." Religious and social ideals of equality motivated him to create and promulgate an entire method of teaching based on this idea, for he believed that music should be the inheritance of all classes and ages of people. At considerable expense to himself, he published his own writings, which included a journal entitled Tonic Sol-fa Reporter and Magazine of Vocal Music for the People. After 1864 he resigned his ministry to devote most of his time to what had become a true movement in mass music education. He and his son John Spencer Curwen incorporated a publishing firm, J. Curwen & Sons, eventually adding "Tonic Sol-Fa Agency" to its name. It became an important publisher of educational music. In 1869 John Curwen established the Tonic Sol-Fa College, which just over 100 years later established the Curwen Institute in London. Though Curwen did not truly invent Tonic Sol-fa, he developed a distinct method of applying it in music education, one that included both rhythm and pitch. William McNaught , a devoted student of the Tonic Sol-fa Method, is said by his son to have thought of it as "musicianship of the mind with the voice as its instrument." (1)
In 1994, several of Curwen's manuscripts became available for purchase, and money from the Rose Marie Grentzer Fund at the University of Maryland was used to obtain these documents as a related collection to the MENC Historical Center in Special Collections in Peforming Arts in the Performing Arts Library. They are six volumes dating from 1863 to 1868. Two are in his hand and signed by him. They contain notes and some paste-ups from his published books and articles, annotated with corrections and additions, and transcriptions of music of Purcell, Bach and others into Tonic Sol-fa notation. One of these two is entitled "Key to the Elementary Composition Exercises in Reporter, Vol. IX." The other four books total 2000 leaves, penned on one side only. They represent "Constructive Exercises in Composition" completed by students of Curwen's method, evidently sent (or handed) to him in separate booklets and bound together later. Each set is signed or initialed by the student and most are dated. Included in the exercises are lessons in transposition and two- and three-part harmony. Some students comment on the exercises, explaining their solutions. Students solved the 163 problems set before them differently, but my quick examination of the books has discovered no commentary from Curwen on the correctness of the student work. Evidently, the exercises themselves have been copied out from some published source, probably the Tonic Sol-fa Reporter and Magazine of Vocal Music for the Public, for one student refers to "Reporter No. 16," another to "this month's Reporter." Perhaps the "Chapters" referred to in all these books were printed as a sections of the Reporter entitled "Constructive Exercises in Elementary Musical Composition." The sources I've consulted mention no separate publication with this title, but a 25-page pamphlet pasted into the first of the two Curwen manuscripts mentioned above carries this title (no author or date and place of publication is given) and contains 262 exercises. Since the "Key" volume mentioned above contains exercises numbered 247-372, evidently published in the Reporter, I conclude that the exercises solved in the student books in this collection were at least initially published in the Reporter, even supposing they were subsequently published elsewhere as well.
The true jewel of this collection is the first manuscript by Curwen mentioned above, for it appears to be a preparatory manuscript for versions of some of his books on harmony, including How to Observe Harmony (1861) (possibly a plan for a new edition, at least for corrections and additions to musical examples). Included is a plan for another apparently never-published book entitled "The Harmony Player: an Introduction to Intelligent Playing on the Harmonium, Pianoforte or Organ." Perhaps most beguiling, there is a plan for a book entitled "Gersbach's Course of Harmonic Sentences / a book for the teacher" or, alternatively, "Gersbach's Course of [originally, Plans for] Musical Sentences / a course of Illustrations and Exercises in Melody and in Two-part Three-part and Four-part Harmony. / An elementary work on Musical Composition. / Modified and adapted to the Tonic Solfa Method by John Curwen." The page with these proposed titles is written in two different colors of ink and also pencil; certainly this was a working document. At the bottom is a note that reads: "N.B. This book I bought in M.S. in Germany, from the widow of Anthon Gersbach, for £10 or £12. The Revolution of 1848 had prevented its publication." Material on Gersbach is not in standard contemporary biographical dictionaries of music, but François Joseph Fétis includes both Joseph Gersbach (1787-1830), a notable teacher of music, especially choral singing, in Switzerland and Germany, and his brother Antoine (1803-1848), an organist, in his Biographie Universelle Des Musiciens (Paris, 1874). In the article on Joseph, along with citations for published books of songs, an unpublished manuscript on harmony is mentioned, possibly the one Curwen bought. A search of RILM, RLIN, WorldCat and the electronically available years of Music Index revealed no material on these brothers except a small pamphlet published in Zurich in 1864, though some libraries own Joseph Gersbach's books of songs and his Anleitung zum Gebrauche der Singschule: mit lithographirten Noten in zwei Heftchen (Karlsruhe, 1833). In Curwen's manuscript are four handwritten pages entitled "Notes from Dr. W. Stern's Memorial of Joseph Gersbach" (which includes notes on "Anthon") and eighteen pages of handwritten "Notes from Gersbach," [which are probably translated from the original German?].
Bonnie Jo Dopp, Curator, Special Collections in Performing Arts.
Materials from this collection must be used in the the Performing Arts Library's Irving and Margery Morgan Lowens Special Collections Room, 10 to 5, Monday through Friday. Please make an appointment with the curator.
Or for a specific question about the collection feel free to ask the curator.
