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The Magic City
The Magic City (.25 linear feet) is an unfinished opera--set amid the 1893 Chicago World's Fair--that Albright planned for at least sixteen years with George Garrett, who helped write (or wrote) the libretto. The series contains files of Albright's notes, research materials and correspondence relating to work on the opera, as well as drafts of the libretto. In 1993 the University of Michigan Museum of Art organized an exhibition, "The Fair View: Alternative Visions of the World's Colombian Exposition," for which Albright gave a lecture/concert about music at the fair, and about the progress of The Magic City. A script of the lecture and correspondence pertaining to the exhibition can be found in this series. The series contains little musical material.
Scores
The heart of the Albright collection is the series Scores (47 oversize boxes), which title refers to the broader definition of the word that includes any written version of a musical work, including parts and sketches.
William Albright Scores
In the sub-series William Albright Scores, the researcher will find a file for each of Albright's works containing some or all of the following versions: notes, sketches, manuscripts, annotated reproductions of manuscripts, and printed scores. The existing versions are parenthetically indicated following the instrumentation. The instrumentation--if not a part of the title itself--is indicated, in a general way, directly after the title. Dates are listed following the version information. When applicable, the titles of the movements are listed below. The existence of a sketch (or other version), which does not include one or more of the other movements, is indicated following the title of each movement that is included.
Many of the sketches of Albright's works were kept separately from the rest of the musical texts, and have been incorporated here into the files of the respective titles. Unidentified sketches and fragments of sketches can be found at the end of the sub-series William Albright Scores.