Christopher Rouse Collection

Peter Jay Sharp Special Collections and Archives, Lila Acheson Wallace Library, The Juilliard School

Contact Information

©2023

Descriptive summary

Organization

Organized in the following series:

Scope and content

The collection is primarily comprised of holograph, facsimile, and published scores by Christopher Rouse, as well as his papers, photographs, realia, and audio recordings. It also includes scores by other composers who donated them to Rouse, often with dedicatory inscriptions.

Administrative Information

Biographical Note

Composer Christopher Rouse graduated from Oberlin College Conservatory of Music in 1971, after which he studied privately with George Crumb. After earning masters and doctoral degrees in 1977 from Cornell University where he studied with Karel Husa, he began teaching at the University of Michigan. He later joined the composition faculty of the Eastman School of Music, followed by a residency at Peabody Conservatory of Music, and a two decades-long affiliation with the Juilliard School. Among the honors bestowed upon Rouse were the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award (1988), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1990), a Pulitzer Prize (1993), and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2002). His Concert de Gaudí for guitar and orchestra received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Composition in 2002, and Rouse was named Musical America’s Composer of the Year in 2009.

The collection illustrates Rouse's development as a composer, with scores spanning from pre-college juvenilia to his final mature works. Rouse described his oeuvre as being divided into two stylistic periods: the first, dating from the 1970s to the mid-1980s, during which his scores reflect the rebelliousness of the rock music of his youth; and the second, from the mid-1980s to the end of his life, when his works were emotionally informed by the death of family members, friends, and distinguished musicians. A telling absence from the collection are pre-compositional sketches; as Laurie C. Shulman, his biographer in Grove Music Online, notes, Rouse "let his music gestate mentally until the entire work had taken sufficient shape in his mind for him to write it out in full score." The collection also documents Rouse's less familiar history as a composer of chamber music, including an early series of twelve "Subjectives" for various soloists and ensembles (1969-1975), and three mature string quartets (1982-2009), among other works.

In Rouse's papers, his thoughts about musical aesthetics and compositional technique are expressed in program notes he wrote for his own works and the works of others. Other prose selections include his essay on George Crumb's significance as a postmodernist icon, and a critical survey of literature about Karlheinz Stockhausen. Rouse's correspondence includes letters from composers John Adams, Chester Biscardi, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, John Harbison, Lou Harrison, Alan Hovhaness, Per Nørgård, George Rochberg, Poul Ruders, William Schuman, Augusta Read Thomas, and Charles Wuorinen, and performers Sharon Isbin and Dawn Upshaw. Also included are promotional and press materials about Rouse’s career, and numerous photographs of Rouse and his associates.

Index terms

Box List