Band Collections in Special Collections in Performing Arts

This collection contains information files as well as recordings and scores of the pieces that have been awarded the Sousa/Ostwald Ostwald Award of the American Bandmasters Association. This annually growing collection features more than fifty scores for band, including many by notable American composers.

With more than four thousand scores, pieces of sheet music, folios, and compilations, this collection acts as a catch-all for band music. The collection is filed alphabetically by composer. Contact the Curator for more information about using the ABA Score Collection.

Claude T. Smith (1932-1987) was a prominent American educator, conductor and composer. This collection contains handwritten condensed and full scores for compositions that were written throughout his career. He was elected to ABA in 1981.

Reed wrote over 250 works, mostly for wind band. He also appeared as a guest conductor with wind ensembles throughout the world. This collection consists of 11 sketches, 7 condensed manuscript scores, and 19 full manuscript scores for several of Reed's original compositions and arrangements. All documents are in Reed's hand.

Mark Hindsley (1905-1999) was a band director, music instructor, author, and composer of band transcriptions. He spent much of his career at the University of Illinois where he directed the Marching Illini and was Professor of Music. In 1948, he became the Director of Bands at Illinois; he served in that position until his retirement in 1970. During his long and fruitful career, Hindsley wrote seven books and more than forty magazine articles about instrumental music. In order to make classical music compositions more widely available to band students, he created over seventy transcriptions. He was elected to ABA in 1936, served on the Board of Directors in 1950, 1955, and 1958, as Vice President in 1956, as President in 1957, and was awarded Honorary Life Member in 1986 and honorary Life President in 1996.

Contains manuscript parts and scores used by Mayhew Lake's (1879-1955) sixteen-piece brass band, the Symphony in Gold, which he conducted for NBC radio. The collection came to the University of Maryland as a gift of J. Frank Elsass on 27 March 1974. An unpublished inventory is available in the repository.

Karl Lawrence King (1891-1971) started his career as a circus bandleader in 1910 with the Barnum and Bailey Circus. For thirty years, beginning in 1920, King conducted the Fort Dodge Military (Municipal) Band. King was a founder of the American Bandmasters Association and served as its president in 1939. The Karl King Collection contains more than 200 of King's published works, mostly marches.

This collection consists of the extant portions of the J. E. Roach Banda Mexicana library of scores and parts, and includes sections 3, 4, and 5 of the original library. These materials total 208 volumes of music written for 73-instrument band and conductor, published between 1881 and 1906.

The Star Music Company Collection contains ninety-four folio size pieces, with parts, published by the Star Music Co., of Eldred, Pennsylvania.

With nearly 10,000 pieces of music, the Salvatore Minichini Collection is one of the largest collections in the ABA Research Center. Minichini (1884-1977) was born in Corbara (Salerno), Italy. In 1905, Minichini came to the United States and founded the Banda Bianca, which changed its name to Minichini's Italian Royal Marine Band in 1915. Minichini made several recordings of Italian symphonic marches and his own arragnments of operatic literature with his ensemble. In 1929, the band alternated with Toscanini and the NBC Orchestra in Sunday afternoon radio broadcasts. The ABA Research Center's Minichini Collection is the bandmaster's own personal library, and is the largest collection of Italian band music in the United States. An unpublished inventory is available in the repository.

The CMP Score Library contains over 300 original works created by the young composers during course of the project. Pieces are written for band, chorus, or orchestra.

The score collection of the National Association of College Wind and Percussion Instructors (NACWPI) Research Center contains over 4,400 scores. This collection of solo and ensemble music for wind and percussion instruments consists of gifts from Dr. Geary Larrick, David Hite, various publishing companies, and NACWPI itself in the form of composition contest scores.