Tufts University

September 17, 2003

I am truly delighted to be here today and participate in this very special colloquium series celebrating the Frederic Louis Ritter Music Collection of the Tisch Library at Tufts University. It was a great honor to receive this invitation, and I want to take the opportunity now to salute Michael Rogan, chief music librarian, for his leadership and vision in making better known this wonderful resource using a variety of technological tools. Gratitude must also be extended to the Berger Family Technology Transfer Endowment for its generous support of Michael's proposal.

Tufts University should be rightly proud of the Frederick Louis Ritter Collection-it is an enviable archive of rare and important musical material. One can only be impressed by the diligence and passion with which this Alsatian-born music scholar, composer, and conductor undertook his score and book collecting. His interests certainly seemed eclectic-he was obviously curious about all periods and aspects of music: historical, paleographic, theoretical, pedagogical, cultural, aesthetic, and scientific. I would like to add here one small footnote of personal coincidence: my very first job out of graduate school in 1985 was at Vassar College, and I was privileged to work in the very same beautiful Gothic Skinner Hall where the Music Department is housed that Ritter worked in as the first Professor of Music at Vassar College. Thus I feel that I am discharging something of a personal debt and homage in speaking today of my distinguished predecessor at Vassar, Frederic Louis Ritter.