Peggy Glanville-Hicks and 'Music Before Columbus'

This is one of the more high-class promotional records I have come across. It was issued in advance of an October 1957 exhibition of pre-Columbian musical instruments at New York's Andre Emmerich Gallery.

To mark that occasion, Emmerich put out this 7-inch, 33-rpm record in a gatefold sleeve. One side is an introduction to the exhibition (and the artworks) by CBS commentator Charles Collingwood, an art collector. The other contains music for the old instruments commissioned from Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks. For some reason, they called the exhibition "Music Before Columbus," which would lead you to think you would hear ancient music - not something newly composed.

P. Glanville-Hicks

The Collingwood commentary is useful, although romanticized (the indigenous pre-Columbian peoples of Mexico are just like us? I think not). The brief Glanville-Hicks suite of a prelude and presto is attractive and well presented by a group including flutist Samuel Baron, who seemingly played on every other classical record made in New York in the 50s.

Charles Collingwood

Why Glanville-Hicks (whom Collingwood calls a "young composer" - she was 45 in 1957)? Well, she was a critic for the New York Herald-Tribune at the time - that might have something to do with it.

I don't want to seem cynical - the Emmerich Gallery was a distinguished institution, with a specialty in pre-Columbian art. And what they produced is enjoyable, and using art in service of promotion was laudable.