By LISA ROBINSON

March is often a windy month, but this year there's another good reason to hang onto your hats: In a gesture of breathtaking generosity, Juilliard's chairman, Bruce Kovner, has donated his extraordinary collection of rare music manuscripts to the School. Comprising approximately 140 items, the collection includes primary source materials for many of the seminal works of the repertoire, and represents one of the finest private collections of music scores to be amassed in the last century. The gift was formally announced on February 28 at a press conference held at Juilliard.

(Left to right) President Joseph W. Polisi; Bruce Kovner, chairman of The Juilliard School; and Jane Gottlieb, vice president for library and information resources, study a Brahms manuscript in Juilliard's library. (Photo by Peter Schaaf)

Many of the items in this incomparable collection—which will be called the Juilliard Manuscript Collection—have only become accessible to collectors and institutions in recent years, and have never been available to the music community at large.

Examples in this category include the lost manuscript of a transposed continuo part for J. S. Bach's Cantata BWV 176 ("Es ist ein trotzig und verzagt Ding"); the lost autograph manuscript of Beethoven's Grosse Fuge for string quartet, in the composer's version for piano four-hands, Op. 134; and an autograph sketchbook for Stravinsky's Petrushka.

Virtually every item in the collection is noteworthy, but other items sure to inspire awe in the scholarly community include the final working manuscript of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony prepared for the printer, with extensive revisions, corrections, and alterations by the composer; the autograph manuscript of the final scene of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro; an extensively worked autograph manuscript of the last 50 or so bars of the first movement of Mahler's Ninth Symphony; one of the earliest surviving manuscripts of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, which may prove to be the earliest manuscript source for the opera; a substantial group of autograph manuscripts by Alfred Schnittke; an almost continuous draft of Schumann's Second Symphony; and an autograph sketchbook for Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten. Several manuscripts and groups of manuscripts in the collection have never previously been available to scholars and musicians in the United States.

Notable both for its breadth and its emphasis on documents that shed light on the compositional process through extensive revisions and annotations by the composers, Mr. Kovner's collection also includes a number of documents with particular relevance to the history of performance, such as Arturo Toscanini's heavily annotated score for Wagner's Die Walküre. Furthermore, most of the works represented in the collection are part of the standard repertoire regularly performed by Juilliard students and ensembles. In addition to many other works by the composers mentioned above, the collection includes important manuscripts and first editions of works by Brahms, Copland, Debussy, Handel, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Scriabin, Sibelius, Wagner, and others.

140 manuscripts represent one of the finest private collections of scores to be amassed in the last century.

Jane Gottlieb, Juilliard's vice president for library and information resources, expresses the gratitude of the entire Juilliard community by saying, "We are enormously grateful to Mr. Kovner for donating his magnificent collection of manuscripts to Juilliard. In doing so, he demonstrates his own belief in the close connection between performance and scholarship, and his recognition of the central role that study of these manuscripts will play in the educational process at the School."

For his part, Mr. Kovner has graciously declined to have the collection named after him, and has specified that the manuscripts always be identified in Juilliard's name. Remarking on his gift, Mr. Kovner states, "It has been great fun to find these manuscripts and pull them together into this collection. I trust that what we are doing at the School will make it possible for Juilliard students and scholars to delve into the compositional processes of these great composers—and share them with the rest of the world."

Indeed, the implications of Mr. Kovner's gift reach far beyond Juilliard. Eager musicologists at the School and elsewhere will have to remain patient, though, as the collection will not be made available to the public until fall 2009, when Juilliard's expansion and renovation project is completed. One component of the project is the creation of a special Scholar's Reading Room containing exhibit cases for use of materials from the collection and special displays, as well as climate-controlled and secure reading and storage rooms dedicated solely to the collection.

In a year already filled with special events honoring its centennial, Juilliard has another milestone to celebrate with the announcement of this historic gift. Commenting on the donation, President Joseph W. Polisi states, "We are deeply honored by Chairman Bruce Kovner's decision to allow Juilliard to serve as the guardian of this remarkable group of manuscripts. The presence of the collection at Juilliard signals a major institutional commitment to integrate extraordinary performance standards with the highest level of musical scholarship. Most importantly, the availability of these manuscripts will provide unprecedented opportunities for scholars and musicians at the School and elsewhere for many years to come."

Lisa Robinson is senior writer for special projects and proposals in the Office of Development and Public Affairs.