By Noah Lenstra
Title: Gerard Behague and Everett Helm Latin American Sheet Music Collection, 1917-1969
Predominant Dates:1920s-1940s
ID: 12/5/44
Creator: Behague, Gerard (November 2, 1937-June 13, 2005)
Extent: 1.25 cubic feet
Arrangement: Organized into four series: Series 1: Brazilian music for voice and piano. Series 2: Brazilian music for piano. Series 3: Argentine Music. Series 4: Cuban Music. All music arranged alphabetically by the composer's last name.
Date Acquired: 04/23/1974
Languages: Portuguese [por], Spanish;Castilian [spa], English [eng]
Consists of Brazilian sheet music from the period, ca. 1915-1945, many pieces bearing the stamp "Almirante" indicating the collection was originally amassed by Henrique F.D. Almirante (b. 1908), Brazilian singer, composer, scholar and collector active professionally in the 1930s-1950s. Publications from Casa Napoleao predominate. Consists largely of popular piano music or voice and piano editions, but also includes several works for violin and a few manuscript items. Includes dance music of the 1920s and 1930s, as well as works connected with Carnival festivities.
Also contains popular Argentine sheet music from the same time period, as well as popular Cuban sheet music from the 1960s.
Brazilian and Argentine collection acquired by Everett Helm sometime in the 1950s. Provenance of Cuban sheet music is unknown. Purchased by the University of Illinois Library from Tulane University's Inter-American Center for Musical Research in the late 1960s by librarian William M. McClellan, under the advice of ethnomusicologist Gerard Behague for Behague to use the collection for his research into the history of Brazilian Music. Only a portion of the Helm collection was acquired by the library to meet Behague's research needs.
Gerard Behague (1937-2005) was born in Montpellier, France and spent his childhood in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Behague earned a diploma in piano performance and composition from the Brazilian Conservatory of Music in 1959. This was followed by a masters degree in musicology from the University of Paris in 1962. He earned his Ph.D. in musicology from Tulane University in 1966, where he studied with Gilbert Chase. While at Tulane, Behague also worked in the Inter-American Institute for Musical research.
Professor Behague began his career as a musicologist in 1966 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Here he taught music history, American music, and Latin American music. Gradually, his research interests shifted toward ethnomusicology. In 1974, Behague became a professor of musicology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he would remain until his death in 2005. Two of his most notable students at the University of Texas were Tom Turino and Donna Buchanan.
From 1969-1977, he served as associate editor of the Yearbook for Inter-American Musical Research, and from 1974-78, he was editor of the journal Ethnomusicology. In 1980 he founded and subsequently edited the Latin American Music Review, a journal that provides a unique forum for academics from all of the Americas to publish in three languages. He was president of the Society for Ethnomusicology (1979-1981) and served on the board of directors of several professional associations.
Behague was particularly well known for his research on the music of Brazil, which he studied both as a music historian and as an ethnomusicologist. Among the books he wrote were his textbook, Music in Latin America: An Introduction (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1979), and Heitor Villa-Lobos: The Search for Brazil's Musical Soul (Austin, TX.: ILAS Monographs, UT Press, 1994).
Acquisition Source: Tulane University Library
Acquisition Method: Collected first by Brazilian composer Almirante. Everett Helm then collected part of the collection from Almirante and built upon it through his own acquisitions. Deposited at Tulane University during the 1960s. Purchased by the University of Illinois Music Library, under the appeal of Gerard Behague in 1974 as Tulane University's Inter-American Center for Music Research had gone defunct and it was terminating its accompanying musicology library. Only a portion of Helm's collection was acquired by UIUC. The collection was transferred to the Sousa Archives sometime after 2012.
Related Materials: Everett Helm Manuscripts at the University of Indiana, Bloomington For more information please see http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/html/helm.html.