Music

The Robert Moevs Collection consists of the papers and manuscripts by Robert Moevs (1920-2007) and the Robert Moevs Audio Archive consists of nearly 200 recordings of pieces by Moevs and his associates. The creator of a rich body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works, Moevs's music combines serialism and tonality in innovative ways. Leonard Bernstein, Erich Leinsdorf, and the Boston Symphony orchestra are among the conductors and ensembles that performed and premiered his pieces.

Robert Walter Moevs was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on Dec 2, 1920. He died in Hillsborough, New Jersey on Dec 10, 2007. After studying music at Harvard University (BA 1942), Moevs joined the US Air Corps and served as a pilot in the Second World War. He resumed his musical studies, attending the Écoles d'Art in Fontainebleau (1946) and the Conservatoire Nationale de Musique in Paris (1947-1951). Then he returned to Harvard (MA 1952). His principal teachers were Walter Piston and Nadia Boulanger. During the three years following graduation, he was a Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome (1952- 1955).

Moevs served on the faculty of Harvard University (1955-1963) and at Rutgers University (1964-1991). He also was chair of the Music Department in New Brunswick (1974-1981). He conducted the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble (1966-1968). Moevs was composer-in-residence at the American Academy in Rome (1960-1961) and a Guggenheim Fellow (1963-1964). He received awards from the National Institute of Arts and Sciences (1956) and from ASCAP (1967). In 1978 Moevs received the Stockhausen International Prize in Composition for his Concerto grosso for piano, percussion and orchestra, which was recorded for CRI in 1981 by the Orchestra of the Twentieth Century, conducted by Arthur Weisberg.

The creator of a rich body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental music, Moevs' work received major performances by George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony, and Leonard Bernstein and Symphony of the Air. He developed a compositional method based on intervallic control (as opposed to specific pitch sequence) that he described as "systematic chromaticism". The system emphasizes not so much the pitches of the music as the intervals generated by the notes. Moevs' style has been described as "an extremely rich resource," because he found a unique way to combine identifiable tonal centers with serialism, creating a musical style the excitement of which arises out of the underlying tension between the tonal centers and the abstraction of serialism. An example of Moevs' style is Itaque ut (1959), an a cappella "episode" drawn from Attis, a Latin poem by the Roman author Catullus. The scores was published by Piedmont Music in 1967.

The Moevs papers include 59 boxes of scores, both published and unpublished, some hand written. The collection also includes many tape recordings of performances of his music, a few long-play records and copies of compositions by his students.

Select Bibliography

J. Boros, 'A Conversation with Robert Moevs', Perspectives of New Music 28/1 (1990): 324-335

J. Boros: 'The Systematic Chromaticism of Robert Moevs', Perspectives of New Music 28/1 (1990): 294-323

J. Boros: 'The evolution of Robert Moevs's compositional methodology.' American Music 8 (Winter 1990): 383-404

H. Pollack: Harvard Composers: Walter Piston and His Students, from Elliott Carter to Frederic Rzewski. (Metuchen, NJ, 1992). Entry on Robert Moevs

R. Moevs, 'Intervallic Procedures in Debussy: Serenade from the Sonata for Cello and Piano', Perspectives of New Music 8/1 (1969): 82-101

The music library contains many boxes and bound volumes of 19th century sheet music from the United States, England, Germany, and France.  We are working on creating metadata for the collection so you can search for items yourself; in the meantime you can come to the library to see what we have.

A special collection of manuscripts, scores, letters, and ephemera from composer Philip Gordon (1894-1983).  A complete inventory of the collection is available on request.  There is another, larger Philip Gordon Collection at the University of Maryland College Park.