About this collection
A finding aid for the music library at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Taos, New Mexico.
What this is
This is a working catalog of the sheet music collection held at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico — the artist-residency organization Helene Wurlitzer (1874–1963) founded in Taos in 1954. The music itself spans roughly a century: 19th-century European editions that likely traveled with the Wurlitzer and Billing families, teaching materials that suggest the Foundation's community and educational activities, and, in the final pile, manuscripts and letters from artists who held residencies here decades later. It is not one person's library so much as a layered record of everyone who has passed through this house with an instrument.
Every item below links back to the searchable collection, so you can go from a name or a puzzle straight to the actual scanned page.
The Foundation extends heartfelt thanks to Lauren Latessa and Ryan Hearty for volunteering their time and expertise to create this catalog of Helene’s sheet music collection.
How the collection is organized
The physical music was sorted into 15 piles, numbered 01 through 15, roughly by instrumentation and genre (piano, exercises, songs, duos, trios, quartets, and so on — see the table below). Each pile was scanned cover-by-cover: one photograph per physical book or booklet. A handful of "supplement" piles (labeled 01.1, 02.1, etc.) hold pieces that were discovered later and belong with an earlier pile; they appear at the end of that pile's sequence, tagged as supplements.
A few cataloging conventions worth knowing before you browse:
- One scan is normally one item. Only a handful of covers were ambiguous enough that a confirming photo of the first page of music was taken; those pairs are merged into a single catalog entry with both images attached.
- Duplicates are flagged, not removed. The Wurlitzer and Billing families evidently owned more than one copy of some pieces. Rather than guess which copy is "the real one," both are kept as separate items and cross-flagged as possible duplicates — 24 pairs in all.
- Stray pages are flagged, not merged. Occasionally an interior music page doesn't match the cover next to it — probably a loose page whose own cover was never scanned. Eleven of these are flagged for a look at the physical piles, in case a matching cover turns up nearby.
The 15 piles
- 01 — Piano (53 items)
- 02 — Piano (53 items)
- 03 — Piano (63 items)
- 04 — Piano, two hands (22 items)
- 05 — Exercises (24 items)
- 06 — Text (31 items)
- 07 — Songs (24 items)
- 08 — Duos (21 items)
- 09 — Piano trios (16 items)
- 10 — Piano trios (17 items)
- 11 — String quartets (13 items)
- 12 — Quintets (6 items)
- 13 — Choral and orchestral (20 items)
- 14 — Solo (8 items)
- 15 — Miscellaneous (15 items)
Pile 06 ("Text") is the one exception to "this is sheet music" — it turned out to hold 1970s concert-artist press kits, old music-magazine clippings, and Foundation correspondence rather than scores. It's kept in the numbering sequence because that's how it was physically stored, but don't expect music notation when you open it.
What the cataloging turned up
None of what follows was known going in — it emerged page by page while cataloging, cross-checked against a short published biography of Helene Wurlitzer. It's presented here as a set of working findings, not settled fact: several readings are explicitly marked uncertain, and a few are outright open questions for someone who knows the collection, or the Foundation's history, better.
Three generations, one shelf
Henriette Billing, 1878–1900s — Helene's mother
Helene Wurlitzer was born Helene Valeska Billing, daughter of Henriette Schneider Billing. Several items are inscribed simply "Henriette Billing," dated as early as 1878 and as late as 1900, mostly in Cincinnati — the clearest reading, "Henriette Billing, June 1897, Cincinnati," appears on a matched pair: a Brahms Liebeslieder piano score and its companion tenor vocal part, both signed the same day.
Helene V. Billing, 1889–1900 — Helene herself, before she was a Wurlitzer
A separate, distinct hand signs "Helene V. Billing," dated between December 1889 (in Berlin, matching the years the family spent in Freiburg for the children's schooling) and 1900. The dates bracket her marriage to Howard Wurlitzer on November 5, 1895 — several items are dated just months before the wedding. The reading isn't certain: the middle initial could be misread as "T." rather than "V.," but "V." fits her documented middle name, Valeska, and none of the surviving copies show a trailing "s" on Billing.
Valeska Wurlitzer, 1913 — Helene's daughter
Helene and Howard's youngest daughter was named Valeska. A Duvernoy violin étude book is clearly inscribed "Valeska Wurlitzer, 1913" — the collection's one unambiguous three-generation confirmation, from grandmother to mother to daughter, all on the same shelf.
Who was Burton Phillips?
Solved: a Foundation co-founder, not a private collector
"Burton Phillips" is by far the most common inscription in the collection — on dozens of Kalmus and Schirmer editions across piles 01 through 05, mostly dated the 1960s. For most of the cataloging pass his identity was a mystery. It resolved itself in pile 06: a 1975 booking letter is addressed to "Henry Sauerwein, Wurlitzer Foundation." Henry Sauerwein III was Helene's close friend in her final years, and helped her establish the Foundation in 1954 — and his colleague, who moved to Taos with him, was Burton Phillips. He wasn't a mystery outside collector; he was running the place.
Gifts from resident artists
Ellis B. Kohs, 1967 and 1977 — a decade apart
The Foundation has hosted resident artists since 1954, and the final pile turned out to hold direct evidence of that: manuscripts and letters composers left for the house. The clearest thread belongs to composer Ellis B. Kohs. A handwritten orchestral excerpt from his opera Amerika, inscribed "To Henry Sauerwein, from Ellis Kohs, in appreciation — Taos, Aug. 17/67," sits alongside a second letter from Kohs to Sauerwein dated exactly ten years later, reminiscing about writing that opera during a 1967 residency and a second book during one in 1977. Same friendship, two gifts, a decade apart.
More resident manuscripts
The same pile holds manuscripts from Christos Tsitsaros (Recuerdos de Taos, dedicated "with deep gratitude" for "a most productive and inspiring summer," 2002), Christopher Shultis (Songs of Love and Longing, movements named for Taos-area trails — Williams Lake, the Rio Grande Gorge Trail, the Osha Loop Trail), Ezra Sims, Jack Behrens ("Taos (1976) Portraits"), Judith Sainte Croix, and three separate pieces by Marshall Bialosky, one of them a manuscript that never seems to have been published.
Other threads worth following
Chilton V. Anderson — a Taos cellist
A cellist's name and Taos address ("Box 12, Taos, New Mexico") appear on three separate cello method books across two different piles, printed as a mailing label rather than handwritten. One of those same books carries a second owner stamp from Quebec, Canada — a well-traveled volume before it reached this shelf.
Student materials — a different collection entirely?
Pile 05 (Exercises) carries almost none of the Phillips/Billing/Wurlitzer names and instead names students — "Miss Clara Handke," a name stamped "Ray Gonzales," a violinist "Carl Blum." It reads more like a teaching set, possibly tied to the Foundation's community or scholarship activities, than like Helene's personal library.
D. Kanner, Sheet Music, Cincinnati — the family's dealer
A recurring dealer stamp, eventually read in full as "D. Kanner, Sheet Music, 19 W. 4th St., Cincinnati, Ohio," turns up on multiple volumes — a small, concrete trace of where the Cincinnati-era purchases were actually made.
Notable individual items
A rare 1888 Russian "name quartet"
The Quatuor sur le nom B-la-f is a real collector's item: four movements by four different composers — Rimsky-Korsakov, Liadov, Borodin, and Glazunov — who each spelled publisher Mitrofan Belaieff's name into a musical theme (B–la–f) as a tribute, published together in 1888 and dedicated to him in print.
A Wagner opera, dedicated to Bayreuth's manager
Der Bärenhäuter, an opera by Siegfried Wagner (Richard Wagner's son), carries a printed dedication to Adolf von Gross, the longtime business manager of the Wagner family and the Bayreuth Festival.
A Chaliapin-associated Russian revolutionary song
"Dubinushka," a Russian workers' song, is credited on its cover to a performance by the famous bass Feodor Chaliapin.
Open questions
These are places where the cataloging pass had to guess, or simply couldn't resolve something — flagged in the catalog itself (search for "flagged" or look for the orange badge while browsing) and worth a second pair of eyes, ideally someone who can handle the physical books.
Stray pages with no matching cover (11 items)
Interior music pages that don't match the cover scanned next to them — probably loose pages whose own covers were never photographed, or were photographed out of order. A few recur with the same arranger (Boguslawski) or the same odd pairing (Brahms piano-four-hands works flanking an unrelated cover), which suggests some of these might belong together if the physical piles are checked.
Possible duplicates (24 pairs)
Same title, same edition, appearing twice. Kept as separate items rather than merged, on the working assumption — confirmed as correct by Ryan Hearty during cataloging — that the family genuinely owned more than one copy of some pieces.
Uncertain readings
A handful of names resist confident transcription: "Mary Channing Wister" alongside Burton Phillips on a Franck score; a possible "Felix Mottl" on a Cherubini quintet; the exact street name in the Schlemüller cello book's "Wurlitzer / 4215 […] St / Cincinnati" address. None of these identifications should be taken as settled.
A note on method
This catalog was built by reading every scan directly and transcribing what's on the page — titles, composers, publishers, and inscriptions — rather than working from existing records. Where handwriting is genuinely ambiguous, both readings are kept in the entry rather than picking one silently. The provenance narrative above is a working synthesis, not an archival finding; it's offered as a starting point for anyone who wants to verify it against the physical collection or the Foundation's own records.