Description:

GEORGE EASTMAN
(1854 - 1932) American inventor and industrialist, perfected the process of making photographic dry plates, invented the box camera and founded the Eastman Kodak Company. Very Fine content T.L.S."Geo Eastman" 1p. 4to. on Eastman Kodak Company letterhead, Rochester, June 28, 1923 to A. J. Warner (1884-1965) the music and drama critic for The Rochester Times Union (1918-61) in Paris concerning the resignation of The Eastman School of Music's first director, Alfred Klingenberg and the search for a replacement as well as the arrival of Vladimir Rosing, who established the school's opera department. In part: "…[Vladimir]Rosing showed up on time and is making a good impression with everybody. His aspirations seem to fit in with our plans and there is a good prospect of our making some kind of an arrangement with him…". Rosing would lead the opera department for the next seven years. Eastman then comments on the resignation of the school's first director: "...In the meantime Klingenberg has resigned and we are looking for his successor. We will take plenty of time and hope to much improve the situation although Klingenberg had some very good points which it would not be easy to surpass. It was in the air before you left but not in shape to say a word to anybody about it...". Klingenberg was ostensibly the founder of the Eastman School when he founded the K.K.G. Institute of Musical Art in 1913 which was purchased by Eastman in 1918. Klingenberg's replacement would be composer Howard Hanson, who directed the school for the next 40 years. Eastman had sent Warner to Europe to secure a conductor the Eastman Theatre Orchestra where he managed to obtain the services of Eugene Goossens (1893-1962) who would later be embroiled in a scandal involving pornography in the 1950s. Eastman concludes, "... I think we must have quite a bit of Goossens' music and I am going to leave it to him to bring over whatever he wants to use…". Goossens would conduct Rossing's orchestra during the late 1920s. A superb letter documenting the early days of one of the world's premier music schools. Usual folds, very good condition with original transmittal envelope affixed with tape to verso.

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October 9, 2010 11:00 AM EDT
Stamford, CT, US

Alexander Historical Auctions LLC

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