The University of Iowa Libraries has a wealth of music and popular culture collections for patrons to explore. Below are links to finding aids and digital collections held in the University’s Special Collections, University Archives, Iowa Women’s Archives, and the Rita Benton Music Library. An online system, Aeon, is used to process requests for collections access.
Login into Aeon (request system)
The Music Library is also home to the Arthur and Miriam Canter Rare Book Room, a collection of over 2,800 rare books, scores, and recordings.
Special Collections
Goldman Band Records
Consists of approximately 4,000 compositions for band, both manuscript and published, as well as correspondence, radio scripts, concert programs, and business papers. Richard Franko Goldman donated 2,200 scores to the University of Iowa School of Music in 1967, and the remaining 1,776 scores and other business documents were transferred to the School following Mr. Goldman’s death. The collection is stored off-site, but materials may be requested and paged to view at the Rita Benton Music Library or the Special Collections and Archives Reading Room.
Keith/Albee Collection
The Keith/Albee collection primarily reports vaudeville programming in Rhode Island between 1894 and 1935, but it includes unique resources for studying vaudeville throughout the east coast and Ohio with a series of Managers’ Reports spanning 1902-1923. The Keith/Albee circuit, as represented in these Reports, involves theaters in Providence, Pawtucket, and Woonsocket, Rhode Island; Boston and Webster, Massachusetts; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Cleveland, Ohio. Theaters in Detroit, Washington, D.C., and New York City also appear with some regularity. The records of Keith/Albee chronicle the expansion of their circuit, changes in its leadership, and the eventual decline of vaudeville. Items dating as late as 1952 are as diverse as usher’s manuals to building permits, air raid precautions to price schedules, and cash books to correspondence. The bulk of the collection is made up of 150 oversized scrapbooks.
Redpath Chautauqua Bureau Records
The Redpath Chautauqua Collection is comprised of approximately six hundred forty-eight linear feet of records primarily from the offices of the Redpath-Vawter Bureau of Cedar Rapids (Iowa), the Redpath-Chicago Bureau, and the Redpath-Kansas City (Missouri) Bureau. Other booking agencies are also represented in the collection, including the Associated Chautauquas of America, the Coit-Alber Chautauqua Company, the Ellison-White Chautauqua System, Loar International Chautauquas, and the Swarthmore Chautauqua Associations. Dating between 1890 and 1944 (bulk, 1904-1935), the collection is arranged into a number of series, including Series III: Choral and Instrumental Sheet Music.
University Archives
Hawkeye Marching Band Records
The Hawkeye Marching Band Records include photographs, drill charts, posters, sheet music and band arrangements, scrapbooks, audio and video recordings, select uniform pieces, and other papers related to band operations ranging from the 1940s-present. Most materials date from the directorships of Frederick Ebbs (HMB Director, 1954-1966), Tom Davis (HMB Director, 1968-1972), and Kevin Kastens (HMB Director, 1998-2017). This collection is stored off-site, but materials may be requested and paged to view at the Rita Benton Music Library or the Special Collections and Archives Reading Room.
Center for New Music (in processing)
Founded in 1966, the University of Iowa’s Center for New Music has been a flagship program in the School of Music. Performing, commissioning, and cultivating new musical works, techniques, ensembles, and performers, this laboratory of sound has been and continues to be a vibrant source of creative work in the Midwest. This archive holds performance programs, business papers, photographs, and other materials. Over two hundred scores donated to the Music Library by the Center in the 2010s are available through a search of InfoHawk+, with many more to come.
Faculty Papers (University Archives)
- Frederick Crane Papers (in processing)
Crane (1927-2011) was a alumnus of the University of Iowa (MA 1956; PhD 1960) and School of Music professor in musicology from 1968 to 1994. - Philip Greeley Clapp Papers (University Archives)
Clapp (1888-1954) was Director of the Department of Music at the University of Iowa from 1919-1953. He was a composer and conductor, in addition to his administrative duties. - James Dixon Papers (in processing)
Dixon (1929-2007) was an alumnus of the University of Iowa (BA, 1952; MA 1956) and Director of Orchestra Studies in the School of Music from 1962 to 1997. - William Hibbard Papers (University Archives)
Hibbard (1939-1989) was an alumnus of the University of Iowa (PhD 1967) and co-founded with Richard Hervig the Center for New Music in 1966. He was a member of the Composition and Theory faculty from 1966 to 1989. - Donald Martin Jenni Papers (in processing)
Jenni (1937-2006) was a member of the Composition and Theory faculty at the University of Iowa from 1968 to 1999. - Charles B. Righter Papers (University Archives)
Righter (1896-1997) was Director of Bands at the University of Iowa from 1937 to 1954.
Alumni Papers
- Ann Howard Jones Papers (in processing)
Jones is an alumnus of the University of Iowa (BM 1964, MA 1966, DMA, 1984). She served as assistant conductor to Robert Shaw (1984-1998) and Director of Choral Activities at Boston University (1993-2015). - Geneva Southall Papers (Iowa Women’s Archives)
Southall (1925-2004) was an alumnus (PhD 1996), the first woman to earn a PhD in piano performance and literature at the University of Iowa. She spent most of her career as professor of music and African-American studies at the University of Minnesota (1970-1992).
Recordings
School of Music Recording Archive
Reel to reel, digital audio tapes, cassette tapes, compact discs, and digital recordings of School of Music performances, dating 1953-present.
Patrons can access programs and current UI personnel may listen to/view sound and video recordings from School of Music ensembles concerts and faculty recitals, 2000-present (incomplete). The School of Music Recording Archive does not contain recordings of student recitals.
An active HawkID and password is required to access recordings.
Ann and Alan January Cylinder Collection
155 cylinder recordings (11 Columbia; 128 Edison; 13 Ed. Jedlička; 3 no label, homemade) and Edison Home Model A phonograph player, four needles, and two horns (small and very large). The 13 Ed. Jedlička and 3 homemade recordings were digitized in 2019 and are available to listen to online. More information about the Ed. Jedlička recordings, the family that donated them to the Music Library, and the Czech archivists who helped identify the cylinders, is available in this 2021 article in the UI Libraries’ magazine, Bindings.
Other Archives
- Voxman Facsimile Archive
Photocopied manuscripts of historical works from music archives throughout Europe, full and partial manuscript arrangements by Himie Voxman, and related modern editions. Organized alphabetically by composer last name, and then alphabetically by work within each composer. To access, please contact lib-music@uiowa.edu.