Cecil Burleigh Collection

(1909–1983)

Call number: WMA III Box 1–2

Burleigh was born in 1885 in Wyoming, NY. He attended the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory in Berlin from 1903–1905, where he studied violin with Anton Witek and composition with Hugo Leichtentritt. Returning to the U.S., he attended the Chicago Music College studying composition with Felix Borowski. He enjoyed a brief career as a concert violinist from 1907–1909 then taught at a series of colleges before going to New York in 1919 to study violin with Leopold Auer and composition with Ernst Bloch. From 1921-1955 he taught violin, theory and composition at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He died in Madison in 1980.

For additional biographical information, see the New Grove Dictionary of American Music. Additional materials related to Burleigh are kept in the Wisconsin Music Archives Information File.

The collection was donated circa 1976. It is unclear whether all the items came directly from Burleigh and his wife or if some were later added to the collection by library staff. Additional papers are housed in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

Photograph from the collections of the University of Wisconsin Archives.

Description:

The bulk of the collection is comprised of twelve bound volumes of published compositions and numerous individual titles, some containing revisions. A list of these compositions is available online or on paper in the Wisconsin Music Archives Information File.

One miscellaneous folder containing Burleigh’s arrangement for violin and piano of Schubert’s Serenade; biographical information in typescript; 2 letters; newspaper article; program booklet of the Burleigh Festival 1954–55; an article about Burleigh in the December 1942 Demcourier; Composers’ Music Corp. catalog.

Recordings: Two cassettes and two 7-inch reel-to-reel tapes of Triology of Symphonies; two cassettes and one 7-inch reel-to-reel tape of Nature Impressions and From the Muses; one 10-inch reel-to-reel tape from WHA Radio, entitled Honoring Cecil Burleigh; one 12-inch glass disc 78 rpm recording marked on the jacket as “Burleigh’s Songs.” A cassette dub of the songs remains with the collection.

The miscellaneous folder and individual compositions are located in WMA III, Box 1. The bound volumes and tapes are in WMA III, Box 2.

Items deleted from the collection:

Published scores by other composers have been removed. See the inventory prepared by Mi-Yon Kim located in the Wisconsin Music Archives Information File for a list of these titles.