From the Archives

Until recently, there has been virtually no scholarly work on the impact of this important patron of new music, in large part because the archive is practically unknown. The Foundation's voluminous archival holdings of 115 boxes across Harvard libraries offer a treasure trove of unexplored information about contemporary concert music in America. The Fromm Foundation archives include autograph scores, printed scores, letters, financial records, concert programs, photographs, reel-to-reel tapes, LPs, typescripts of lectures, interviews, and many other items. The lion’s share of the archive is at the Harvard University Archives. The scores as well as Paul Fromm’s personal correspondence with composers are in Houghton Library. Some more recent materials are held in the Isham Memorial Library at Loeb Music Library and in the office of the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard.

Seeing the opportunity for scholarly discoveries, a graduate seminar was conducted by Professor Anne Shreffler in the fall of 2012. Students conducted archival research and collaborated to produce an exhibition in the Loeb Music Library, entitled Composing the Future: The Fromm Foundation and the Music of Our Time. The exhibition was accompanied by multimedia presentations of sound and moving images.

The content included in this section are excerpts from conference papers that resulted from the archival work conducted for this seminar by graduate students. They are an example of the rich historical background of the Fromm Foundation found in the archives held at Harvard University.