Selections from the 1902 stage musical The Wizard of Oz by St. Louis native Paul Tietjens will highlight a performance of 19th- and early 20th-century popular song at 7 p.m. Nov. 7 at the Gallery of Art.
The concert, part of the Music at the Gallery of Art series, will feature six songs by Tietjens, including “Scarecrow,” “Dorothy’s Love Is Love” and “The Traveler and the Pie.” Also on the program are “Variations on ‘Yankee Doodle,'” a virtuosic work for piano; and “Who’ll Have Me” and “We Met by Chance,” popular songs from the 1850s published by St. Louis’ Balmer & Weber and selected to commemorate the University’s founding in 1853.
Tietjens’ manuscript collection is housed in the University’s Gaylord Music Library. Tietjens Hall, home of the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, is named in his honor.
Each piece for the performance is drawn from the music library’s 60,000-item Sheet-Music Collection. Performers will include undergraduate and graduate students from the music department, accompanied by Annette Burkhart, instructor in piano.
Tietjens was born in St. Louis in 1877. At age 14, he appeared as piano soloist with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and later studied in Chicago, where he met Frank Baum, author of the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Baum invited Tietjens to compose music for a stage adaptation, which opened in Chicago in 1902 and enjoyed a successful five-year run. (The musical was revived in 1962 at The Muny in Forest Park — “probably the last time it was heard in St. Louis,” said Sue Taylor, Ph.D., concert coordinator in the music department.)
Flush with triumph, Tietjens pulled up stakes for Europe, where he studied with famed pianists Harold Bauer and Theodor Leschetizky, and he remained abroad for the rest of his career (though his piece Carnival was performed by the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra in 1922).
He moved back to St. Louis in 1942 and died the following year.
Tietjens’ music manuscripts and printed editions were donated to Gaylord Music Library in 1961 by his sister, Mrs. Louis A. Dammert. These consist of more than 150 compositions, including music for voice, piano solos, chamber works, symphonies and orchestral works, as well as an opera, The Tents of the Arabs, and music for the play A Kiss for Cinderella.
An ongoing conservation effort is being spearheaded by Brad Short, music librarian; Roxanna Herrick, preservation administrator at Olin Library; and Shirley K. Baker, vice chancellor for information technology and dean of University Libraries.
Tietjens Hall, dedicated in 1975, was designed by the firm Smith and Entzeroth and built thanks to a bequest from Otto Tietjens, Paul’s brother. The facility, now joined to the Music Classroom Building, contains teaching studios, a rehearsal hall, an electronic music studio and 21 soundproof practice rooms.
The concert is free and open to the public. For more information, call 935-4841.
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