The ABCs of the WPA Music Copying Project and the Fleisher Collection

By Gary Galván


A veritable Alexandria among music libraries, the edwin A. Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music in the Free library of Philadelphia has maintained its unchallenged position as "the world's largest lending library of orchestral performance material" for over three quarters of a century. "It houses virtually the entire standard repertoire, and is also known for its many rare and out-of-print works." Combined with its extensive array of archival correspondence, the Fleisher Collection represents the most important single resource on Pan American orchestral music and tells the story of its twentieth-century emergence from the shadow of western Europe.