Music Collections

The Nelly Goletti Music Collection

Throughout her distinguished career, Nelly Goletti continued to innovate, first at the Paris Conservatory then as a prolific composer and headlining entertainer throughout Europe. On this side of the Atlantic, she was a prominent performer in television's early days and a sought-after talent by the Hollywood film industry. The work of a lifetime is now preserved at Marist in The Nelly Goletti Music Collection. Encompassing more than 300 musical compositions, the collection also includes materials that interpret Miss Goletti's career and many achievements. In the years to come, the use of Miss Goletti's work by Marist students and faculty will help ensure the meaningful remembrance of this uniquely talented woman.

Miss Goletti is also memorialized on campus through the Nelly Goletti Theatre, home to the on-campus performances hosted by the Music Program, and Nelly Goletti Scholarship, given to an outstanding student musician from their sophomore through senior year. 

Robert Hoe V Collection - "Heritage of the March"

Robert Hoe V spent his life devoted to concert and military band music—discovering it, recording it, and sharing it with others. A successful businessman and philanthropist who lived in Poughkeepsie, he started his musical journey as a boy playing the cornet. He switched to the euphonium in college and became enamored with band marches. Subsequently he assembled the world’s most revered private library of sheet music in that genre. He traveled the world collecting it, financed recordings of it by some of the world’s most renowned bands, and mailed these recordings to other enthusiasts at his own expense. Now, through an unusual collaboration involving his heirs, and Marist College, his painstakingly collected internationally renowned library will be digitized and made available to the public.

The Robert Hoe Music Collection consists of sheet music for marching and concert bands written by a plethora of well-known composers. Significant components of the collection include original John Philip Sousa manuscripts and parcels of the band libraries of two historically renowned bandmasters, David W. Reeves and Alfredo Tommasino. The collection contains more than 50,000 titles of music, well in excess of 250,000 parts or pages to be digitized. The library also contains phonograph record albums produced by Hoe, their master recordings, additional recordings on audiotape, and correspondence from researchers and music aficionados from around the globe, all requesting access to the collection.

 

The Rick Whitesell Collection

The Whitesell Collection consists of discs tracing the development of black music in America as well as other genres of music. Included in the collection are several issues of "Goldmine" magazine, a music magazine where Rick worked as editor and feature writer, as well as audio and videotapes containing interviews and performances.

The Rick Whitesell Record Collection has been characterized as one of the most comprehensive private collections of its type in the country. Tracing the development of black music from the turn of the century to the late 1950s, the collection consists of seven, ten, and twelve-inch discs whose numbers span into the thousands. Early artists such as the Mills Brothers, the Southernaires, and the Charioteers are all represented in the collection. The Whitesell Collection also contains a broad cross-section of works by such premier groups as the Delta Rhythm Boys, Fred Astaire, Les Paul, Ella Fitzgerald, and the most successful of the jubilee groups, the Golden Gate Quartet.

It is important to remember that Rick Whitesell was more than just a record collector. Rick became a music historian. His talents were fully utilized at "Goldmine" magazine, a publication for record collectors. As editor and feature writer, Rick was able to formalize his studies and knowledge into insightful articles about important areas of America's cultural growth. "Gold mine" is also a part of this collection as issues can be found dating from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s. Rick's expertise served as an important resource for many. Collectors, musicians, filmmakers, independent writers, and other music publications that needed small or substantial amounts of information would contact Rick for assistance. Any special consideration Rick received was used to further explore America's musical growth, correct historical inaccuracies he uncovered, or help those in the business. When he learned of older musicians who had never received royalty payments, he directed them to the proper songwriting associations for assistance. Rick's selfless giving lives on by the donation of his collection to Marist College for the purpose of providing future scholars with the resources to continue his work.

For information on accessing the Music Collections, please contact Marist Archives & Special Collections.