Conservatorio de Música Alfredo Levy collection.

The Conservatorio de Música Alfredo Levy collection (1880-1996) consists of the personal files of Cuban pianist and composer Alfredo Levy Nadal (1914-1999) and the music library of the Conservatorio de Música Alfredo Levy (active 1947-1962). The collection is comprised of correspondence, artifacts and ephemera, and approximately 1,000 manuscripts, first and very early editions, and printed musical scores. Notable correspondents include Gonzalo Roig, Joaquín Nin, Joaquín Nin-Culmell, Alejandro García Caturla, and Frank LaForge. Highlights of the musical collection include early editions by Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Henry Cowell, and works by significant Cuban and Latin American composers such as manuscripts by Ignacio Cervantes, José White, Ernesto Lecuona, and Gonzalo Roig; including music for Roig’s celebrated zarzuela, Cecilia Valdés, and lullaby, Canción de Cuna. Works by many women composers are found in the collection, including manuscripts attributed to Cuban composer María Matilde Alea and published music that had belonged to influential performers such as Cuban opera star Rosalía Chalía, Graciela de los Reyes, Carmen Levy, and Maria Toler. Some scores have hand-written dedications and ownership autographs, which, along with a variety of memorabilia and correspondence, reflect a vital and cosmopolitan period in Cuban musical history.

Item, Folder number and/or title, Box number, Conservatorio de Música Alfredo Levy collection, MSS 443, Special Collections, MSU Libraries, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI.

Finding aid online: http://as.lib.msu.edu/repositories/2/resources/35

The collection was purchased from Gary Marks in May 2014.

Alfredo Levy Nadal (1914-1999) was a Cuban composer and pianist. A dedicated teacher, Levy taught previously at Havana’s Conservatorio Hubert de Blanck and at the Escuela Vocacional José M. Valdés Rodríguez before founding the Conservatory bearing his name. As a pianist, he premiered works of important Cuban composers such as Joaquín Nin Castellanos and Joaquín Nin-Culmell, and accompanied some of the island’s most illustrious singers, including the Cuban sopranos Carmelina Santana Reyes and Iris Burguet, touring internationally with Burguet. Levy directed the chorus of the Teatro Musical de La Habana from 1970-1976, a period which saw the Cuban premiers of important international works at the Teatro. He lived in the home which had also been his conservatory until his death in 1999.