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William E. Brandt Papers, 1872-1995

Overview of the Collection

Title
William E. Brandt Papers
Dates
1872-1995 (inclusive)
Quantity
31 containers, (16 linear feet)
Collection Number
Cage 584
Summary
The William Brandt Papers consist chiefly of music manuscripts. The collection also includes correspondence, audio recordings, printed materials, photographs and miscellaneous items.
Repository
Washington State University Libraries' Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections (MASC)
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections
Terrell Library Suite 12
Pullman, WA
99164-5610
Telephone: 509-335-6691
mascref@wsu.edu
Access Restrictions

The collection is open and available for on-site research use.

Languages
English
Sponsor
Funding for encoding this finding aid was provided through a grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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Historical Note

William Edward Brandt was born in Butte, Montana, in 1920. Shortly thereafter, his family moved to Spokane, Washington. He began endeavoring to compose music as early as fourteen, teaching himself enough to write rudimentary compositions during the period between high school and his second year of college (1934-1939). Brandt began attending the State College of Washington in 1939, majoring in chemistry, but composing music for the classes in Modern Dance taught by Norma Anderson. Brandt began almost four years of military service in the U.S. Army in 1942. Travel associated with his army enlistment allowed him to attend recitals and concerts around the country, including stops in Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, where he attended concerts and recitals. He worked for three years as a librarian of classified materials at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, a position that gave Brandt time on weekends to continue his work with composition, with a strong emphasis on counterpoint and form. In Utah, he also met the late well-known illustrator Edward Gorey, with whom he maintained a friendship.

In 1945, Brandt met and married Jane Quire (also from Spokane), who for a brief time had attended the famous Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in New York. Their son, Roger Frederick, was born in May of 1946. Jane Quire encouraged Brandt to apply to Eastman on a so-called "challenge" basis, which he did successfully with a composition titled "Night." After he was discharged from the Army in 1946, Jane encouraged him to apply for serious study in music at the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester, New York, which she had attended briefly. He applied to their Graduate School on a "challenge" basis, submitting a work for large orchestra, chorus and vocal soloists based on Robinson Jeffers' poem "Night" as evidence of his abilities. He was admitted and studied orchestration and composition with Bernard Rogers and Howard Hanson from 1946-1950. His successes at Eastman began with a reading of the "Poe Ballet" at the 1947 Symposium, and with other readings at subsequent Eastman Symposia.

During the Eastman years, Brandt's compositional style (as he writes in unpublished biographical notes quoted throughout this synoptic sketch) became more "reasoned and modal" and less rooted in "romantic chromaticism" and "tonality." Though contrapuntal, the writing was less dissonant, featuring compositions more "unified in harmonic and melodic" schemes. The orchestral "King Lear Suite" and the "Third String Quartet," examples of Brandt's Eastman style, were chosen by Howard Hanson to be performed at the American Composers Festival Concerts in Rochester and in Toronto, respectively. Brandt obtained his Master of Music degree in 1948 and his Ph.D. in 1950.

From 1950 to 1956, Brandt sought permanent employment in his field. He and Jane Quire divorced. He taught music in Seattle for a time, giving piano classes under the auspices of the Hopper-Kelly Music Company. During the course of his work, he met soprano Janet Steinke. They were married in 1953 and had two sons, David Evans Brandt (b. 1955) and Douglas Edward Brandt (b. 1960).

Brandt was a member of the musical faculty of Washington State University from 1956 to 1985, when he retired as full professor. From 1958 to 1983, he was also the choirmaster at St. James Episcopal Church in Pullman, Washington. During this period Brandt's secular compositional style became increasingly "chromatic, building on the previous contrapuntal style" and evolved into the twelve-tone serial technique. The variety of choral music he composed for the church, by contrast, was written in a tonally nonfunctional triadic style "in order to effect some sort of compromise between desirable æmodernity' and the limitations of the choir, the tastes of the congregation, and the composer's own somewhat conservative ideas about church music... ." Brandt published The Way of Music in 1963, and issued a revised edition in 1968. He worked with music faculty at Indiana University to produce a unified course in music theory and history. Brandt was responsible for anthologies covering the Baroque, Classic and Romantic periods. Other authors produced the Medieval and Modern period anthologies as well as accompanying theory and sight-singing texts. Due to a change in the ownership of the publisher, only the anthologies were published. In the 1980s, Brandt wrote another unpublished text for use in his Washington State University Honors courses which dealt with how various arts in the twentieth century reflected their historical contexts. Since retiring in 1985, his musical compositions have been composed in a "looser, not always dodecaphonic style, even plainly tonal when the purpose and the materials seem to require it." Brandt's "Toccata for Piano" was played in South America on a tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

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Content Description

The William Brandt Papers consist chiefly of music manuscripts. Some of these compositions are fragments. The organizational arrangement has been imposed by the archivist, and consists of two series: Series 1, Music Manuscripts 1934 -1993, includes Subseries 1.1, Non-Oversize Manuscripts, and Subseries 1.2, Oversize Manuscripts, both arranged in alphabetical order by composition title. (In cases where a composition has been produced and/or reproduced in both size formats, those folders of material have all been placed with oversize manuscripts.) Series 2, Correspondence and Reference Material 1946-1995, includes Subseries 2.1 Correspondence, and Subseries 2.2, Reference Material. The correspondence is arranged chronologically by date but has been left in its original internal order. Series 3, Writings and Ephemera 1872-1993, includes programs, publicity, reviews, lectures, talks, published articles, introductions, miscellaneous materials and diplomas and certificates. Series 4, Photographs and Drawings 1942-1993, includes both black and white and color performance stills and personal photographs. Series 5, Phonograph Records, circa 1940s, contains six 78 RPM demonstration recordings.

The descriptive information in Series 1 is standardized according to the classification of musical compositions employed by Arthur Cohn in Recorded Classical Music: A Critical Guide to Compositions and Performances (Schirmer Books, 1981), xi-xii. An index following the descriptive inventory lists Brandt's music compositions in opus number order with corresponding folder number.

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Administrative Information

Acquisition Information

William Brandt (Emeritus Professor of Music, Washington State University) donated his papers to Washington State University Libraries in 1987 (MS87-35) and 1990 (MS90-69).

Index of Compositions in Opus Number Order

Note: William Brandt did not always assign unique opus numbers to specific compositions, nor did he assign all compositions an opus number. Thus, to the group of compositions titled "Miscellaneous Piano Pieces" from the period 1934-1938, Brandt assigned opus numbers 1-7, though these are not listed here. Brandt also assigned individual opus numbers 1 through 7 to a later group of (seven) different compositions, which are listed in this index. "Miscellaneous Piano Pieces" may be found in Folder 89.

Opus 1 125
Opus 2 15
Opus 3 26
Opus 4 46
Opus 5 198-200
Opus 6 15
Opus 7 41-42
Opus 9 154
Opus 11 29-31, 107
Opus 12 66
Opus 13 29-31
Opus 14 158
Opus 15 29-31, 132
Opus 16 184-185
Opus 17 157
Opus 18 167
Opus 19 80
Opus 20 55-56
Opus 21 99
Opus 22 159
Opus 23 133
Opus 24 131
Opus 26 57
Opus 27 119-120
Opus 28 134
Opus 29 181-183
Opus 30 201-207
Opus 31 49
Opus 33 43
Opus 34 148
Opus 35 120
Opus 36 88
Opus 37 123
Opus 38 164
Opus 39 83
Opus 40 168-174
Opus 41 64
Opus 42 135
Opus 44 124
Opus 45 121
Opus 46 17-20
Opus 47 63
Opus 48B 40
Opus 48D 5
Opus 48E 53
Opus 49A 127
Opus 49B 128
Opus 51 38
Opus 51A 39
Opus 53 74
Opus 54 60
Opus 55 44-45
Opus 56 94
Opus 57 153
Opus 58 85
Opus 59 87
Opus 60A 68
Opus 60D 6
Opus 60E 7
Opus 60F 11
Opus 61 72
Opus 62 62
Opus 63 73
Opus 64A 25
Opus 64B 24
Opus 65 58
Opus 66A 106
Opus 66B 86
Opus 66C 34
Opus 66D 35
Opus 67 175-180
Opus 68 97
Opus 69 16
Opus 70 32
Opus 71 59
Opus 72 165
Opus 73 95
Opus 74 48
Opus 75 21
Opus 76 28
Opus 79 130.1-130.5

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Detailed Description of the Collection

William Brandt initially processed and organized the collection in 1993-1994. Stephen D. Youngkin reprocessed the papers in February of 2001 under the supervision of Manuscripts Librarian Robert N. Matuozzi, who also edited the finding aid.
2012

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