Musician Attendance Book, 22 Oct 1875 - 24 Apr 1880, New York Philharmonic

pid

schaffer nyp attendance

label

Musician Attendance Book, 22 Oct 1875 - 24 Apr 1880, New York Philharmonic

Timestamp

10/24/2021 16:05:18

URL for full object

https://archives.nyphil.org/index.php/artifact/03719025-3317-40b1-b5e7-a617c12277fb-0.1?search-type=singleFilter&search-text=%2A&search-dates-from=01/01/1700&search-dates-to=01/01/1900&doctype=businessRecord&sort-order=asc&sort-column=npb:SortRecordGroup&page=3

Citation for full object

Musician Attendance Book, 1875-1880, 22 Oct 1875 - 24 Apr 1880, Folder 498-02-04, Board of Directors Records, New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives. https://archives.nyphil.org/index.php/artifact/03719025-3317-40b1-b5e7-a617c12277fb-0.1

Filename in shared drive folder

Schaffer NYP Attendance

General description of the complete original artifact

This artifact is an attendance book for the musicians of the New York Philharmonic for both rehearsals and concerts between October 22nd, 1875 and April 24th, 1880.

Estimated number of records in data set

350

Estimated number of fields if this were a database

3

Estimated time to digitize all records in set (hours)

8

Time period when data was created

1875-1880

Organization creating data

Philharmonic Society of New York (Digitization funded by the Leon Levy Foundation)

Individual who created data (if known or guessable).

While it seems to be issued by the board of directors, given the variation in handwriting, it would appear that each musician wrote their own name in the ledger, with some bookkeeper responsible for collecting and managing all of the information

Shortcomings of this taxonomy for data set (if any)

The taxonomy is basic but legible and clear. Some shortcomings might be the lack of information gathered, as there only includes the names of each musician with no further information. Another improvement could be a way of organizing the records by performance type; while the data is organized chronologically, being able to reference specifically 'Extra Private Rehearsal', 'Private Rehearsal', 'Public Rehearsal', or 'Concert' could be useful, although it was most likely just not needed.

Notes about the image you chose

The particular page I chose was interesting, as it highlighted several flaws and strengths of the record as a whole. Between performances there was a set of colored lines, seemingly for making it easier to read the data set. What I found interesting about this was the fact that the color order of these markings differed (the first being blue/orange/blue, the latter being orange/blue/orange), looking throughout the rest of the record, it seems this alternation in color code is random with some even having 4 or 5 orange/blue colored lines, as well as a few black lines. The next interesting thing I found on this page was the fact that only the right page is used. This is something that recurred a decent amount in this book, with it being self-evident that the ink bleeding from the other sheet made that page unusable. On top of this, the third reason I found this page compelling was due to the spilled ink in space number 9 of March 1st 1878's rehearsal. Again, instances of spilled ink can be found all over this book, and as predicted the following page would not be usable as a result of this. A logical assumption could be made that because they were using a fountain pen or something similar, and where constantly handing off the pen to the next musician, there was a high chance of ink leaking out.