Lilla Belle Pitts Papers

Umbrella Collection name: Music Educators National Conference Historical Center 

Individual Collection name: Lilla Belle Pitts Papers

Repository name: Special Collections in Performing Arts, Performing Arts Library, University of Maryland 

Type: Papers

Collection dates: 1928-1961, with the bulk falling between 1938 and 1960

Extent: approximately nine linear feet

Description: Mimeographed and manuscript music, notes, typescripts, clippings, and official and personal correspondence created or collected by Lilla Belle Pitts.

Statement of provenance: Lilla Belle Pitts left these papers to her brother at the time of her death in 1974. He felt they should be housed with the official papers of the Music Educators National Conference, and so gave them to the University of Maryland in 1984.

Finding Aid: A finding aid and folder-level inventory by Jim Alberts (2000) are available in the repository.

SCPA shelf location: Collections Room, MENC aisle J

Biography: Lilla Belle Pitts was born in 1884 in Aberdeen, Mississippi. As a child, Lilla Belle excelled as a pianist, violinist, and singer. In 1905, Pitts began her studies at the Kidd-Key Conservatory, affiliated with the North Texas Female College, but she left in 1906 to work as a private piano teacher in Louisiana. In 1907, Pitts moved to Chicago and studied at the Chicago Conservatory of Music, where she met influential music educator Birdie Alexander.

Between 1910 and 1923, Pitts worked for the Amarillo and Dallas public schools before becoming an educational representative for Columbia Records between 1921 and 1923. Pitts is thought to have established the first orchestra in the Texas panhandle during her tenure in Amarillo.

In 1923, Pitts resigned from Columbia Records and enrolled at Columbia University Teacher’s College. Here she was first exposed to the influential progressive education ideas of John Dewey. Pitts left Columbia in 1924 for her first long-term teaching assignment. She stayed at the Grover Cleveland Junior High School in Elizabeth, New Jersey, until 1938.

Here Pitts developed and experimented with numerous progressive ideas in music education. She believed that popular, ethnic, and folk music should be used in the classroom. She felt that music could act as a force for change in society, and encourage greater cultural tolerance and openness. Pitts also experimented with the then-trendy concept of integrating music with other aspects of the curriculum, primarily history and social studies.

In 1935, Pitts received her bachelor’s degree from Columbia at the age of 51, and in 1938, she was hired as an assistant professor of music education at Columbia and published her first book, Music Integration in the Junior High School. According to her biographer, Gerald L. Blanchard, Pitts became the most influential music educator in the nation, since teachers from all over the country came to Columbia for workshops and summer sessions. Pitts retired from Columbia in 1954, but remained active as a clinician. During this period, Pitts coauthored the influential textbook series “Our Singing World.” Pitts was forced by illness to retire from active teaching in 1962. She died in 1970.

Pitts's influence on the American music education community was deep and lasting. Her advocacy for “child-centered” music education, the promotion of diverse cultural experiences through music, the use of folk and popular music for children, and the integration of music into the wider curriculum helped set the course for music education in the second half of the twentieth century. Her writings on the purpose and mission of music education provide an eloquent, thoughtful defense for the importance of music and art education for all students.

Jim Alberts 2000

Life Chronology:

Much of the material for the biographical sketch and chronology is drawn from Gerald L. Blanchard, Lilla Belle Pitts: her life and contributions to music education (Ed.D Dissertation, Brigham Young University, 1967).

Series Arrangement: Pitts herself arranged her papers into seven series, divided as follows: Classroom music, files and clippings relating to music education research, personal and professional files, special topics in music, music and related arts/music integration, music education and MENC-related files, and miscellaneous files.

Series I: Classroom Music
Series II: Published Articles and Clippings
Series III: Personal/Professional Files
Series IV: Special Topics for Music – Opera, Cantatas, etc.
Series V: Music and Related Arts
Series VI: Education, Music Education, MENC
Series VII: Miscellaneous

Series Description:

Series I: Classroom Music
Dates: 1928-1956, bulk from 1948-1956

This series includes song lists, mimeographed and manuscript music copies, lyric sheets, and some clippings of printed music. This series represents Pitts's accumulation of educational material, and she probably used these files primarily to demonstrate classroom music techniques. This series also includes program notes relating to specific pieces or types of music (specifically, Stravinsky’s Petrouchka and Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals ).

Series II: Published Articles and Clippings
Dates:1938-1961, bulk from 1944-1956

This series includes manuscript notes, typescripts, galley proofs, and author copies of journal articles by LBP. This series covers a number of years, although the bulk of the clippings appear to cover the years 1956-1962. This series includes some correspondence relating specifically to Pitts publications, including the Guide to 16 mm films for music education, the “Our Singing World” series, and her promotional work for Teaching Film Custodians, Inc. The numerous handwritten drafts of articles and position papers document Pitts’s longstanding difficulty with writing, a problem of which she complained frequently. This series also includes numerous folders full of press and magazine clippings, on political figures, musicians, and news events. However, most of the clippings in this series relate to Pitts’s interest in educational psychology and philosophy, and some others relate to music in childhood. Thus, many of them are directly topically related to Pitts's scholarly work. Since the filing arrangement was clearly decided upon and imposed by Miss Pitts, and the clippings often make it somewhat easier to date other materials in the file, it was thought best to retain these files in their original order and context.

Series III: Personal/Professional Files
Dates: 1942-1961

This series includes most of Pitts’s correspondence, with Birdie Alexander, Robert van Doren, James Mursell, Jack Robbins, and others. Also included is business-related correspondence between Pitts and Teaching Film Custodians, Warner Brothers, and Western Union. This series also includes many items related to Pitts’s teaching duties, including contracts, recommendations for employment or graduate study, and material related to Pitts’s frequent educational workshops given during the fifties.

Along with series VI, this series also contains some files relating to Pitts’s involvement with the MENC. However, those files relating to her tenure as MENC president are generally housed in series VI.

Series IV: Special Topics for Music – Opera, Cantatas, etc.
Dates: 1938-1960

This series includes manuscripts, annotated clippings, and some typescripts and mimeographed sheets relating to Pitts’s music-research interests. Many of the files relate to her interest in opera education for elementary and junior-high age students, and some relate to Pitts’s tenure on the board of the Metropolitan Opera. Some of these files may have been used in Pitts’s well known “opera sings,” mass “do-it-yourself” demonstration/performances of standard excerpts that Pitts pioneered. This series includes predominantly supplemental and secondary materials on music, but it also contains enough actual music that it should be consulted as a counterpart to series I.

Series V: Music and Related Arts (which may be non-music)
Dates:1938-1960, bulk 1948-1960

This series consists primarily of clippings, with some handwritten manuscripts and note sheets. This series reflects Pitts’s interest, noted above, in integrating music education into the wider humanities curriculum. Many of the clippings relate to humanities, art, and social science instruction in the classroom; some include annotations by Pitts relating to music.

Series VI: Education, Music Education, MENC
Dates: 1938-1948, bulk 1938-1944

This series consists of files relating to Pitts’s tenure as vice president and president of the MENC (1938-1942 and 1942-1944 respectively) and files relating to Pitts’s extensive activities with the MENC after 1942. This series also includes typescripts of reports and papers given at MENC local and regional meetings. This series documents Pitts’s visionary leadership of the MENC in the early forties and her attempts to steer the organization toward a wider vision of progressive music education.

This series includes the bulk of Pitts’s professional correspondence relating to the MENC and her tenure as president and later chair of the MENC executive committee, including material on the controversial restructuring of the MENC governing structure and the charge of the Executive Committee.

Series VII: Miscellaneous
Dates: Various, bulk 1948-1960

This series, which may have been created as a filing scheme by Pitts’s sister during Pitts’s final illness, includes clippings on numerous subjects and manuscript notes by Pitts. The manuscripts include notes on reading, some notes for possible future article topics, and some notes relating to Pitts’s educational activities in the fifties.

Materials from this collection must be used in 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.