In about 1476, the Flemish music theorist Johannes Tinctoris wrote, “there is no composition written over forty years ago which is thought by the learned to be worthy of performance.”  Tinctoris, proud of what he saw as the many improvements made to music in the fifteenth century, may have been surprised then to learn that  the music of his own time, together with that of many later generations, would eventually become just as forgotten as the music of the Middle Ages.

Fortunately the Early Music Revival, which began in earnest in the 1930s and continues in full force today, has led to the rediscovery of much of this music. Few realize, however, that even before the 1930s, interest in medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music was beginning to renew. One of the most important milestones in the public’s rediscovery of these musical periods was Felix Mendelssohn’s 1829 performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (1727).  A few publishers in the early nineteenth century also issued new editions of “ancient” music in notation that modern performers could easily read.  One example of such an edition from the LSU Libraries’ Special Collections is The Triumphs of Oriana. This anthology of madrigals by various English composers was originally compiled by Thomas Morley in 1601 and was reissued by William Hawes in about 1818. The line “Long live fair Oriana” is sung in each of the twenty-three pieces and is thought to refer to Queen Elizabeth I (who, ironically, died at about the same time the book was published).

Another score from LSU’s Rare Book Collection that relates to the nineteenth-century Early Music Revival is Idylle Sur La Paix, a short divertissement consisting of dances and arias by the great French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully. Published in Paris in 1685, this music was written to celebrate the end of a war between France and Spain and was first performed in the orangery of the Château de Sceaux for King Louis XIV.  LSU’s copy of the score was owned at one time by the French conductor, composer, violinist and harpist Joseph Hasselmans (1814-1902), who used it for a public performance in Strasbourg on May 14, 1868. Several annotations, in pencil, probably relate to this performance.  The score later passed to Hasselmans’ grandson, Louis Hasselmans (1878-1957), a professor of music at Louisiana State University. 

– Michael Taylor, Assistant Curator of Books

In 1919, shortly after the end of the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson traveled to France to participate in the Paris Peace Conference.  Here he helped decide the fate of Germany and her allies and oversaw the creation of the League of Nations (now the United Nations).  He also had his portrait painted by the Irish artist Sir William Orpen, one of Britain’s official war painters who, in addition to depicting life in the trenches, painted over one hundred portraits of politicians and military commanders.

Most of Orpen’s World War I portraits are now at the Imperial War Museum in London.  His portrait of Wilson hangs in the White House.   However, Orpen is known to have made several informal pen-and-ink sketches of his paintings, which he inscribed and sent to friends.   Two of these were recently discovered among a collection of uncataloged materials at the LSU Libraries’ Special Collections.

One is based on the White House’s official portrait of Wilson and was sent by Orpen to his friend Robin Legge, music critic for the London Daily Telegraph.  “My dear Robin,” Orpen wrote at the top of the drawing, “this is The Peace maker as he really is — tie and all, taken direct from the official portrait by Sir William Orpen KBE, RA, RI, otherwise known as Bloody Old Bill.”

Many of those who attended the peace conference regarded Wilson, an academic and a former college president, as cold and aloof.  A second sketch by Orpen, apparently an off-hand caricature not based on a more formal portrait, captures Wilson’s air of detachment.  Signed “Orps” (Sir William’s nickname), it too was sent to Robin Legge in 1919 from the offices of the British Delegation in Paris.

For more information on these drawings, please contact one of the special collections curators.

– Michael Taylor, Assistant Curator of Books

Two of the nineteenth century’s most controversial figures, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, had at least two things in common. One was the mass media’s love of comparing them to our primate cousins. Lincoln, “the ape baboon of the prairies” as one of his adversaries called him, was often portrayed in political cartoons as a mischievous monkey with a silly grin on his face. Likewise, few members of the religious right needed any convincing that Darwin, who theorized in On the Origin of Species (1859) that humans are descended from apes, was directly related to his simian subjects.

By a strange twist of fate, Lincoln and Darwin had one other thing in common: they were both born on the exact same day, February 12, 1809. In celebration of the 200th anniversary of their birth, this month’s “Cabinet of Curiosities” blog post highlights two items from the holdings of the LSU Libraries’ Special Collections.

On April 28, 1862, shortly after federal troops captured New Orleans, George B. Wallis, a reporter for the New York Herald, wrote to his editor, John Gordon Bennett, about his interview that morning with President Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln, Wallis wrote, “had the fullest confidence in the good news from New Orleans” and was pleased at the progress of the war. “The President looks fresh and vigorous, & says that the government of the U[nited] States, complete & intact, will come out of this war unshaken again by domestic & foreign enemies for at least a hundred years to come.” (George B. Wallis Letter, Mss. 1770).

Charles Darwin was equally upbeat when he wrote to his colleague Sir John Richardson in December 1851. Richardson had lent Darwin a box of animal specimens for him to examine, which Darwin was “particularly glad to see.” Although Richardson was not a theorist like Darwin, his exacting scientific studies (and the studies of other men like him) were what made Darwin’s theories possible. Entering the navy at an early age as a surgeon, Richardson accompanied the arctic explorer Sir John Franklin on two expeditions to Canada between 1819 and 1827 and made many important discoveries there in the field of natural history. Richardson did not accompany Franklin on his ill-fated final voyage to the Arctic in 1845-48, in the course of which Franklin and his crew mysteriously disappeared. He did, however, lead a voyage in search of Franklin in 1848-49. Unsuccessful in its primary goal, the voyage nevertheless gave Richardson one last opportunity to collect additional samples of arctic flora and fauna. He wrote about his ordeal in An Arctic Searching Expedition (1851), which Darwin informed Richardson he had “lately been reading with much interest.” (James E. Murdoch papers, 1837-1903, Mss. 667)

–Michael Taylor, Assistant Curator of Books

When most people think of printing for the blind, Braille is the first thing that comes to mind. Few are aware that another system was developed almost at the same time.

In 1845, William Moon, a young man who had lost his sight after being stricken with scarlet fever, developed a system of embossed (raised) printing that would make it possible for the blind to read with their fingers. In comparison to the French inventor Louis Braille’s system, Moon’s letters (which were based on Roman letterforms) were easier for individuals who had not been born blind to learn to read. Thanks to the financial support of his blind patron, Sir Charles Lowther, Dr. Moon’s name soon became known around the world. A complete English Bible, in sixty volumes, was produced, as well as other materials in over 400 languages. When the Duchess of Gloucester, daughter of the late King George III, visited Moon’s home, she supposedly wept — her father, a dedicated reader, had spent the last years of his life in misery, partly due to blindness. A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Moon also pioneered the production of maps for the blind, such as the one of the British Isles seen here.

Apart from Braille, the Moon alphabet is the only system of writing for the blind that is still taught today.

LSU Special Collections recently acquired a copy of In Memoriam, a privately printed book published in 1873 by William Moon’s wife, Anna Maria Moon. The volume contains memorials to several members of her family as well as three specimens of Moon printing, including one with a portion of the Lord’s Prayer in twelve different languages.

– Michael Taylor, Assistant Curator of Books

Mardi Gras celebrations in Louisiana are almost always tinged with political and social satire. President Bush, Governor Jindal, and even Britney Spears — these are just a few of the names that have inspired colorful floats and costumes in recent years. In 1873, New Orleans’ famous Mystick Krewe of Comus took their inspiration from none other than the British naturalist Charles Darwin, who had recently published On the Origin of Species, a highly controversial book in which Darwin presented his theory of natural selection.

Dressed as everything from mice to monkeys, the members of the krewe paraded through the streets of the city. A poem, in imitation of Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man, was painted on transparencies and carried along by the revelers. The real butt of the joke, however, was the Republican Party, not Darwin. The city police force, which supported the GOP and its plan for reconstruction of the post-Civil War South, wasn’t amused. As the parade tried to cross Canal Street, the police put an end to it.

Nevertheless, that didn’t prevent the publication of a small book to commemorate the event. Now part of the Irby C. Nichols Papers at the LSU Libraries and entitled The Missing Links to Darwin’s Origin of Species, the book contains over a dozen cartoons of strange creatures, half man, half beast. Some of the characters are identifiable. Ulysses S. Grant, for example, has been crossed with a caterpillar and lounges on a leaf smoking a cigar. General Benjamin Butler, the despised commander of the Union army in New Orleans during the Civil War, is shown in another cartoon dining with a party of bears and hyenas. Members of the notoriously corrupt metropolitan police are depicted throughout the book as sundry slithering animals. Such men, the poem suggests, were fit subjects for Darwin’s investigations as well as proof that he was right — men are descended from apes! Just look at the people who are running our city!

This post is the first in a new category on the Special Collections blog, the Cabinet of Curiosities. Need a subject for research? Take a peek into the Cabinet! Descriptions of especially ususual or interesting items that could form the basis of a research paper will be posted here.

– Michael Taylor, Assistant Curator of Books