Thursday, March 24, 2022

Ida Mae Crombie

I just happened upon the manuscript of Ida Mae Crombie's manuscript of "Scale Stories" in the Library of Congress archives. The published book appeared in 1925:

Crombie's "Scale Stories" are student-teacher duets (not scale-based solo pieces like my "Scale Tales). She gives her pieces titles that begin with the letter of each scale, so we get a nocturne called "The Desolate Desert," "Dance of the Dwarfs," and a waltz called "Dance of the Daffodils" for D minor; and "The Bobbing Brooklet," and a Ballad called "The Bonnie Blue Bells."


Navigation is a bit difficult because of the small LOC viewer window, and this manuscript doesn't go into keys that have more than four sharps or four flats (it abruptly ends with reference to the key of D-flat major).

I learned only a little about Ida Mae Crombie from the internets.

She was born in 1882 and lived on 31 Derry Street in Manchester, New Hampshire, where she taught violin and ran a chamber music program at the YMCA. Her father was named True Worthy Crombie, and Ida Mae had an older brother who died in infancy. It looks like she never married. She published four books for A.P. Schmidt, including a calendar piece.

Here's an notice in a 1921 issue of Musical America about a performance of one of her violin and piano pieces:
I would be interested in seeing what from the manuscript made it into the book, and hope that anyone who might have a copy could scan it, save it as a PDF, and share it in the IMSLP (or send it to me, and I will).

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