Bornschein music manuscripts

Franz Carl Bornschein was born February 10, 1879. He graduated from Peabody Conservatory of Music in 1902 and joined the faculty, teaching in the preparatory department until 1914, then in the advanced school. He taught violin, violin pedagogy, conducting, harmony, and composition. As a composer he produced choral works (accompanied and unaccompanied) including art songs, anthems, transcriptions of folk songs, cantatas and operettas for children's and adults' voices, an oratorio, and a short opera; pedagogical and other works for instrumental solos and ensembles; and programmatic suites and tone poems for orchestra. He also arranged and transcribed music by other composers. Sometimes he wrote the words for a song as well as the music; some of these were published under his pseudonym, Frank Fairfield. He won a number of prizes for his vocal compositions. The prizes are listed in the pamphlet, Choral Compositions by Franz Bornschein,copies of which are in the collection (Box 10).

In addition to teaching and composing, Bornschein was a music critic. He was the Baltimore correspondent for Musical America from 1905 to 1948, and for a time the music critic for the Baltimore Evening Sun. He also conducted the Baltimore Music Club Chorus, and guest-conducted the Baltimore Symphony and other orchestras, sometimes at the premiere of one of his own works.

In 1907 he married Hazel Knox, a singer, also a member of the Peabody faculty. Many of his works are dedicated to her.

He died June 8, 1948. An obituary notice appears in the summer 1948 edition of The Peabody Notes that is included in the collection (Box 10), and another, from the Baltimore Sun, June 9, 1948, is in the Dielman File in the MdHi Library. Other newspaper articles on Bornschein also appear in this file.

Much of Bornschein's music has a religious or patriotic theme. In addition to his hymns and anthems there is his oratorio, Deodate, or The Apocalypse. His opera Song of Songs is based on biblical sources. Among his cantatas are Independence Bell and The Minute Man among his symphonic poems Ode to the Brave; Symphonic Poem to the Heros of `The Hornet,' and A Cry to Arms.

Other works are folkloric, or simply American in flavor. Examples are his miniature suite Homestead Tunes and related pieces; and his series of tone poems based on American themes: Leif Ericson, Cape Cod Impressions, The Mission Road, and others (see p. 55 of this inventory). His works for chorus not only include settings of poems by American poets such as Walt Whitman (The Mystic Trumpeter, revised and renamed Joy!) and Edgar Allan Poe (The Conqueror Worm), but also songs in dialect like Hay fo' de Hosses and Go `Way Spooks! (Plantation Song), and pieces like The Two Wives (A New England Legend).

Bornschein evidently was intrigued by the Middle and Far East, for he composed Three Persian Tone Poems and also an operetta, The Willow Plate, and a cantata, The Emperor and the Nightingale, based on Chinese legends. His music for children was often based on folk tunes. Mother Goose's Goslings, an operetta, and the miniature suite of the same title for elementary orchestra, is derived from the obvious source. A similar piece, The Gay Troubador, is based on transcriptions of French songs, some of which were also printed as Six French Folksongs.

Like other composers Bornschein frequently revised his own music. Sometimes it was just a matter of rearranging the music for a different group of voices or instruments; at other times it amounted to a completely new use of the thematic material. The development of a work can sometimes be traced through the different versions present in this collection, but most of the manuscript items do not have dates on them so their evolution cannot be confirmed. The second tone poem from Three Persian Tone Poems, originally titled In the Palace Garden but renamed Feast of Roses, seems to have gone through three revisions (449., 453., 457.Ms.); four, if you count the original draft or sketch of the piece, which is probably item 460.Ms. A good example of Bornschein's method of translating a rough symphonic sketch into a complete score is The Earth Sings, items 500.Ms. and 501.Ms. Later minor revisions were incorporated in subsequent copies of the work (502., 503., 504. Ms.).

This collection does not contain a copy of everything that Bornschein ever wrote or arranged. Some pieces are listed in the pamphlet Choral Compositions by Franz Bornschein that are not represented here at all. Others are represented only by negative photostats or an incomplete set of parts. The Enoch Pratt Free Library has a collection of his music, also (supposedly) the Library of Congress and other institutions (see p. 77 of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra program for Nov. 21, 1943). Miss Hazel Skirven, the donor of this collection, has in her possession scrapbooks containing symphony programs, newspaper clippings, etc., which undoubtedly shed light on other aspects of Bornschein's career. But the present collection clearly shows the breadth and richness of Bornschein's musical production, particularly his choral works and the warmly romantic, lushly-colored program music.