University Libraries

Harold Blumenfeld

Contents

• Biographical Sketch
• Finding list of the Harold Blumenfeld Archive
• List of manuscripts
• Published materials of Harold Blumenfeld held by the Gaylord Music Library
• Manuscripts of Harold Blumenfeld listed in the Gaylord Music Library Supplementary Catalog
• Link to Harold Blumenfeld's Web Page

Biographical Sketch

Harold Blumenfeld, born on October 15, 1923 in Seattle Washington, was educated at the Eastman School of Music (1941-43), Yale University (BM 1948, MM 1949), and the University of Zurich (1948). His principal teachers were Bernard Rogers and Paul Hindemith. He trained as a conductor with Robert Shaw and Leonard Bernstein at Tanglewood during the summers of 1949-52. Prof. Blumenfeld joined the faculty of the Washington University Music Department in 1950 and remained until his early retirement in 1989.

Blumenfeld's involvement in opera is many-faceted: he was director of the Opera Theatre of St. Louis (1962-66); led the Washington University Opera Studio (1960-71); was a critic during the Sixties writing for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Los Angeles Times, Opera News, and Opera; and, since the Seventies has turned to composing. Blumenfeld has written two comic operas, Fourscore: an Opera of Opposites and a one-act bagatelle, Breakfast Waltzes both with Charles Kondek as librettist. During this time, Blumenfeld produced a body of vocal works based on Hart Crane and Derek Walcott, Baudelaire and Verlaine, and Rilke and Mandelstam. These various works gained him awards from the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters in 1977, and the National Endowment for the Arts in 1979.

Blumenfeld was the first composer to devote extensive attention to the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud. During the Eighties and early Nineties, Blumenfeld immersed himself in Rimbaud poetry and lore, composing a variety of pieces that culminate with the two-act opera, Seasons in Hell. This opera traces the adventures of the adolescent poè maudit and his subsequent disastrous fortune-seeking in Africa. The opera received its première on February 8 - 11, 1996 at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music with Malcolm Fraser directing and Gerhard Samuel conducting.

Blumenfeld began composing a new opera, Borgia Infami in 1998 while at the Bogliasco Foundation, Liguria. Borgia Infami is based on German novelist Klabund's headlong Borgia expose and Victor Hugo's ultra-operatic drama, Lucrece Borgia and was completed in 2001. The opera is another collaboration with librettist Charles Kondek and deals with the obsessions, passions and crimes of the notorious Spanish Borgia clan ingeniously connecting this well known story to the present.

Operas Produced, Directed and Conducted 1963-1971

with Washington University's Opera Studio and Opera Theatre of St. Louis

Monteverdi : Incoronazione di Poppea*
Gluck : Iphigenie en Tauride*
Pergolesi : Livietta e Tracollo*
Caldara : Il Giuoco del Quadriglio*
Mozart : Der Schauspieldirektor
Rossini : Il Barbiere de Siviglia
Donizetti : Rita
Rimsky : Kaschei the Deathless***
Debussy : L'Enfant Prodigue
Stravinsky : Le Rossignol*
Hindemith : The Long Christmas Dinner*
Milhaud : Trois Operas-Minutes*
Britten : The Burning Fiery Furnace*
Ian Hamilton : Pharsalia*
Lawrence Moss : The Brute*
Peter Westerfard : Mr & Mrs. Discobolos*
Mark Bucci : The Hero*

*first St. Louis production
***American state premiere

The Washington University Gaylord Music Library has the distinction of holding a comprehensive collection of Harold Blumenfeld materials. Please consult the Library's online catalog for more information.

Finding list of the Harold Blumenfeld Archive

Series I: Photographs, bios and vitas, correspondence, newspaper clip file and painting

1. (folder) photographs
2. (folder) bios, vitas, lists of performances
3. (folder) diary (1977)
4. (folder) programs of featuring Blumenfeld works
5. (folder) Correspondence: Dominick Argento (1996-2002)
6. (folder) Correspondence: Rosemarie Beck (1971, 1972)
7. (folder) Correspondence: Jack Beeson (2004) photocopy
8. (folder) Correspondence: Martin Bernheimer (1968, 1974)
9. (folder) Correspondence: Leonard Bernstein (1954, 1955)
10. (folder) Correspondence: Martin Bookspan (1973, 1974)
11. (folder) Correspondence: Pierre Boulez (1963)
12. (folder) Correspondence: Benjamin Britten (1970)
13. (folder) Correspondence: Mark Bucci (1968)
14. (folder) Correspondence: Leslie Chabay (n.d.)
15. (folder) Correspondence: Michael Colgrass (n.d.)
16. (folder) Correspondence: Aaron Copland (1968)
17. (folder) Correspondence: Luigi Dallapiccola (1959)
18. (folder) Correspondence: William H. Danforth (1974, 1979, 1980)
19. (folder) Correspondence: David Del Tredici (1960-1977)
20. (folder) Correspondence: Walter Ducloux (1966)
21. (folder) Correspondence: John Eaton (n.d.)
22. (folder) Correspondence: Thomas H. Eliot (1965-1969)
23. (folder) Correspondence: Bruce Ferden (1980)
24. (folder) Correspondence: Lukas Foss (1979, 1985)
25. (folder) Correspondence: Malcolm Fraser (1986-1999)
26. (folder) Correspondence: J.W. Fulbright (1967)
27. (folder) Correspondence: Richard Gaddes (1979, 1980, 1983)
28. (folder) Correspondence: Isabella Gardner (1968-1978)
29. (folder) Correspondence: Martin Gelland (1996-1997)
30. (folder) Correspondence: Leigh Gerdine (1965, 1967)
31. (folder) Correspondence: Vladimir Golschmann (1955, 1965)
32. (folder) Correspondence: Pauline Hanson (n.d.)
33. (folder) Correspondence: Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1956)
34. (folder) Correspondence: Hans Werner Henze (1965)
35. (folder) Correspondence: Lewis Hilton (1968)
36. (folder) Correspondence: Paul and Gertrude Hindemith (1957, 1964, 1965)
37. (folder) Correspondence: Elihu M. Hyndman (1966)
38. (folder) Correspondence: Charles Kondek (1975-1979)
39. (folder) Correspondence: Charles Kondek (1989-2000)
40. (folder) Correspondence: Charles Kondek (1999-2003)
41. (folder) Correspondence: Robert Kotlowitz (1968, 1969)
42. (folder) Correspondence: Ernst Krenek (1977)
43. (folder) Correspondence: Lotte Lenya (1963, 1964)
44. (folder) Correspondence: Rolf Liebermann (195?)
45. (folder) Correspondence: MMB (1995) publisher
46. (folder) Correspondence: James Merrill (1981)
47. (folder) Correspondence: Darius Milhaud (1963)
48. (folder) Correspondence: Thea Musgrave (1977, 1978)
49. (folder) Correspondence: Howard Nemerov (1970, 1975)
50. (folder) Correspondence: Russell Patterson (1969)
51. (folder) Correspondence: George Perle (1978)
52. (folder) Correspondence: J.D. (John Donald) Robb (1974)
53. (folder) Correspondence: George Rochberg (1956)
54. (folder) Correspondence: Gerhard Samuel (1965, 1985-1995)
55. (folder) Correspondence: Harold Schonberg (1970)
56. (folder) Correspondence: Joseph Schwantner (1982)
57. (folder) Correspondence: Ralph Shapey (1961)
58. (folder) Correspondence: Robert Shaw (1956, 1977)
59. (folder) Correspondence: Gregg Smith (1978)
60. (folder) Correspondence: Georg Solti (1961, 1966)
61. (folder) Correspondence: William Sydeman (n.d.)
62. (folder) Correspondence: Stuart Symington (1967, 1971, 1974)
63. (folder) Correspondence: Robert L. B. Tobin (1969)
64. (folder) Correspondence: Hugo Weisgall (1968-1978)
65. (folder) Correspondence: Charles Wuorinen (1975)
66. (folder) Correspondence: Misc. (1995)
67. (folder) Correspondence: Misc.
68. (folder) Clip file (reviews and articles)
69. (folder) Translations
70. (outside box) handheld slide viewer

Series II: Scrapbooks

1. Compiled by Carolyn Lopata (sister of the composer)
2. Production notebook for Monteverdi L'Incoronazione di Poppea (1966)

List of manuscripts

Note: Manuscript titles are transcribed from the items themselves and are not necessarily consistent throughout the list.

• Amphitryon 4 [opera]
• Ange de flamme et de glace [medium voice and chamber ensemble]
• Borgia Infami [opera]
• Breakfast Waltzes [opera in one act]
• Carnet de damne [mezzo-soprano and chamber ensemble]
• Charioteer [baritone, viola, guitar]
• Circle of the Eye [medium voice and piano]
• Djerassisong (or Djeriassicycle) [medium voice and piano]
• Eroscapes [mezzo-soprano and chamber ensemble]
• La face cendree [soprano, cello and piano]
• For Sion!—Oh Thee [soli, chorus, and chamber ensemble]
• For Sion!—Oh Thee [soli, chorus, and orchestra]
• Four Poems [men's chorus]
• Fourscore: an opera of opposites [opera in 2 acts]
• The Harp the Monarch Minstrel Swept [mens chorus with cello and piano]
• Illuminations: Symphonic fragments after Rimbaud [orchestra]
• Movements for Brass [brass quintet]
• Mythologies [baritone and chamber ensemble]
• Rilke [soprano and guitar]
• Seasons in Hell: A Life of Rimbaud [opera in two acts]
• Silentium [medium voice and piano]
• Song of Innocence [soli, large chorus, chamber chorus and orchestra]
• Starfires [mezzo-soprano, tenor and chamber ensemble]
• Sterne und Stein [medium voice and piano]
• Three Scottish Poems [SATB chorus]
• Transformations [piano]
• La vie anterieure [mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone and chamber ensemble]
• La voix reconnue [soprano, tenor and chamber ensemble]
• Voyages [baritone and chamber ensemble]
• War Lament [mixed chorus and guitar]

An additional list giving performing forces is available at the American Music Center.