Music

The Ernestine Schumann-Heink Collection was bequeathed to Pomona College in 1938. The music manuscripts, including works by Amy Beach and Gustav Mahler, have been digitized in the Claremont Colleges Digital Library.

Consists of over six hundred volumes of opera scores and librettos from the 17th to the 19th centuries as well as early published editions of choral and orchestral music.

The collection is particularly rich in Methodist hymnals and psalters including early editions by John Wesley, but it also contains hymns that have been sung in America by all denominations.

The collection dates from the early 17th century to the present, the majority are American publications. The range is broader than hymnology: song books of temperance societies, Grange and fraternal organizations, and political parties; Civil War songs; and children’s song books are to be found among the titles.

Widely known as a pianist and composer prior to joining the Scripps College faculty, Lee Pattison was the regional director of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Project Number One in music in New York City, 1936–1937. The files from his two-year association with the project contain five folders of clippings and other folders of correspondence, surveys, financial estimates, planning papers, reports, brochures, press releases, speeches, and the texts of works performed. A collection of more than two hundred programs from concerts sponsored by the WPA accompany these items.

A large part of the collection are the flute music scores from the 1900s–1940s (bulk 1930s) that were collected by both Charles K. North and Herbert R. Rifkind.

John I. Perkins Collection includes more than six thousand volumes bequeathed in 1941 by this Los Angeles book collector who wished his books to be used by students. Subsequently, there have been many generous benefactors and donors who have contributed to this collection. Important resources for the study of the history of the book are here, including cuneiform tablets, papyrus and palm leaf books, thirteenth to sixteenth century illuminated manuscripts, incunabula, and splendid examples of modern presswork from the turn-of-the-century to the present.