«The Department of Musical Instruments continues to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the first gift of musical instruments from Mary Elizabeth Adams Brown, who over several decades built a collection of more than 3,300 instruments for the Museum. The collection she gave is named for her husband, John Crosby Brown, and still forms the majority of the Museum's departmental holdings.»
Prior to any thoughts of collecting musical instruments, though, Mary Elizabeth Adams Brown, her husband, and four of their six children spent the winter of 1881–82 in Vienna. They were there to "cultivate whatever capacity for music in us was either already there or could be discovered," and each family member studied a separate instrument while residing in the city. Mr. Brown, already a competent organist, took three lessons a week from none other than Anton Bruckner (1824–1896)—then on the faculty of the Vienna Conservatory and organist at St. Stephen's Church.
Anton Bruckner (top left) and the Brown family's music teachers during their stay in Vienna. Image courtesy of the author
Was it a formal introduction or chance that brought the Browns and Bruckner together? Ultimately, there are no clues. We do know, however, that despite Bruckner's legendary unpopularity as a composer in Vienna, he was a favorite of the Brown family. In her Vienna diary, Mary Elizabeth described Bruckner as a "very funny, fat, warm-hearted old man with a plum pudding face and a few spears of hair sticking up on his head which clearly resembled the pieces of almond usually projecting from [such] a pudding." At the same time, Bruckner was at work on his Seventh Symphony, which would not be performed until 1884, and only then was it premiered in Leipzig, and not Vienna. In 1882 he autographed its opening bars for the Browns, a familial gesture which they carefully preserved in their archives.
The first phrase of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony, penned and autographed by the composer in 1882. Image courtesy of the author
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