Expand your knowledge: These are all open to the public.

1. Chicago-Colorado Colony Records, which tell the story of the 1870 colony that settled in, and eventually became, modern-day Longmont. (Norlin Library special collections) 

2. The David F. Day collection features microfilm of his diary from his time as “chief of scouts” for General Blair during the Civil War. (Norlin Library special collections)

3. For pictures of the first ascent of Jagged Mountain in 1933, and other Colorado climbing firsts, check out the photo albums of Dwight Lavender. (Norlin Library) 

4. The early phonograph record collection has over 100 recordings from 1912-1940. (American Music Research Center)

5. An extensive map collection which consists of around 200,000 maps. (Earth Sciences & Map Library)

6. Visit CU’s “living library” with a collection of over 535,000 plants, lichens and mosses. (CU Herbaruim)

7. The Grauman’s Theatre scores, with over 4,000 sheets of silent movie “soundtracks.” (American Music Research Center)

8. An extensive materials collection contains everything from types of woods to geosynethics, most traditionally used in construction and design. (Engineering, Math and Physics library)

9. A photograph collection by Henry Asa Allen, who President Theodore Roosevelt dispatched to document the construction of the Panama Canal. (Norlin Library special collections)

10. The Red Scare collection contains FBI files on professors and administrators from anti-communist investigations. (Norlin Library)

Photo by Glenn Asakawa 

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Rodney Sauer bought a cultural treasure sight unseen -- a vast trove of silent film-era musical scores. Then he gave it all away. 

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foCSmkh3X04&feature=youtu.be]

Rodney Sauer knew it would be a heavy lift: He’d signed up to haul 5,000 pounds of vintage sheet music in 60 large boxes from Los Angeles to his Colorado home, driving the distance alone and loading and unloading on each end.

The pianist and sometime-accordionist had looked into shipping the whole lot, but the boxes weighed more than UPS would handle. So, in September 2013, Sauer (MChem’89), bought a one-way plane ticket to L.A., rented a U-Haul and recruited five people he’d never met to convene at a storage facility between Interstate 5 and the Los Angeles River, just north of Dodger Stadium. There, in unit B749, he beheld the treasure he had purchased sight unseen and come a thousand miles to collect: Nearly 4,000 musical scores from silent film era L.A. movie theaters.

“The music is really hard to find,” said Sauer, founder of Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, one of the nation’s top performers of music for silent film. “When it becomes available, you buy it.”

The first successful feature-length sound film, The Jazz Singer, hit theaters in 1927. By 1929, silent film was passé. Most of the films are lost, as is most of the music.

Sauer and his helpers, enlisted through an internet chat room for silent film fans, formed a fire brigade of sorts, relaying the music from its third-floor redoubt to the U-Haul.

Resisting the temptation to tear into the sealed 80-pound boxes “looking for the good stuff,” Sauer kept to task, bought his companions dinner and hit the road, arriving in Colorado on Sept. 11, 2013. He pulled up to his Louisville home amid heavy rain deluging the Boulder area. It would lead to historic flooding, evacuations, destroyed homes and more than a half-dozen deaths. A day later, a bridge into Louisville collapsed.

Sauer left the music in the U-Haul until the rain stopped, checking periodically to make sure the truck wasn’t leaking. Afterward, he and friends moved the boxes inside.

Over the next five years, Sauer pored over the scores, most of them from the early 20th-century Grauman theater chain, which included the Metropolitan and Grauman’s Chinese Theater (now called the TCL Chinese Theatre), the Hollywood Boulevard site of generations of glamorous awards ceremonies. Sauer digitally scanned many pieces, cataloged most and began performing some of his favorite finds.

Earlier this year, he gave it all away. “I want to use this music,” Sauer said. “I don’t necessarily want to own it.”

The lucky winner was CU Boulder, where Sauer developed an interest in silent film music after discovering the American Music Research Center’s collections, jointly held by the College of Music and University Libraries. That led to his career as a silent film music performer. He’s felt grateful ever since.

The vast trove of Grauman scores dramatically augments CU’s existing collections and transforms the university into a premier center for the study of the live music that was a hallmark of early 20th-century movie going.

The scores, most of which date from 1900 to 1929, provide a window into a vivid and stylish corner of American popular culture, and represent a major new resource for music and film scholars, students and performers alike.

With the Grauman scores now on campus, said Susan Thomas, CU music scholar and director of the American Music Research Center, CU Boulder now has “one of the most important collections anywhere.”

Joy of Feeling

As film soundtracks do today, music for silent films prompted and intensified viewers’ emotional response to the screen action. But in the early 20th century, the music was performed live by flesh-and-blood musicians — typically a lone pianist in small-town theaters, small groups in mid-size cities and, in some of the most lavish big-city movie palaces, 80-member orchestras. For patrons, the live music was as important as the films.

“It was like going to the opera, but cheaper,” said Sauer.

The Grauman scores, some of which are adaptations for film of orchestral compositions and some of which were composed for silent film use, bear descriptive names: “Storm Music,” “The Furious Mob,” “A Simple Love Episode.”

Many pieces also bear the marks and cues of long-gone musicians who worked in those early 20th-century movie houses. “Father of Zaida attacks officer,” reads one. “Dog carrying stake down path,” says another. “Fade to Mr. Martin,” says a third.

Sauer and Mont Alto have already incorporated many Grauman pieces into the group’s repertoire, which it performs at film festivals around the country and which it records for new releases of old films. (The group plans to perform for free at 2 p.m. at CU Boulder’s Muenzinger Auditorium Nov. 17, drawing on Grauman scores to accompany the 1921 silent film The Phantom Carriage, an early fantasy/horror film.)

Ragtime

Sauer, who grew up in Berkeley, Calif., came to CU Boulder in the 1980s as a graduate student in chemistry. He discovered silent film music almost by accident.

A lifelong pianist with an early interest in ragtime jazz, he had founded Mont Alto in 1989 to perform early 20th-century dance music — waltzes, tangoes, the Charleston, the half-and-half, the one-step. As one gig led to another, Sauer found himself searching for fresh period music to play. Someone tipped him off to a cache at CU. It was the Al Layton collection of silent film scores.

Sauer liked the music and realized he’d stumbled into a new niche for Mont Alto. In time, the five-member group would establish a national reputation, playing at film festivals in San Francisco, Hollywood, New York, Washington and Telluride.

In mid-2013, when Sauer heard that fellow silent film music performer Robert Israel was moving to Europe and had a large collection of scores to sell, he acted fast — and without much information.

“A couple people I trusted were telling me it was a good collection,” Sauer said.

He bought it.

Israel, then living in Los Angeles, had acquired the scores in the 1990s from California Lutheran University. Earlier, in the 1970s, an unknown person heard one or more old L.A. movie houses were throwing away sheet music, tossing bundles to the curb, Israel told Sauer. The person drove to the scene and scooped them up.

California Lutheran eventually acquired the scores but found little use for them, and offered them to Israel. He kept the collection in his apartment for nearly 20 years. Tracing the scores to Grauman was easy: Many are marked “Property of Grauman’s Theatre, 3rd St. House” or “Metropolitan,” which had opened in 1923 as “Grauman’s Metropolitan.”

As excited as Sauer was to acquire them, he knew a university would be a better caretaker. CU topped his list, given his relationship with the American Music Research Center.

CU was also an ideal repository because it’s only 10 miles from Sauer’s house.

“It’ll be nearby,” he said of the collection.

A deal came to fruition early this year, and in June Sauer and helpers delivered the scores to Norlin Library, where they are already accessible for review in the University Archives.

Through digitization, Sauer hopes to make selections of the music available to musicians worldwide. He’ll work with CU to create “starter kits” of silent film music, enabling performers everywhere to obtain it — and perform it — easily.

“I would like this repertoire to be known in the same way the repertoires of operas and plays are known,” he said.

In the Fall 2019 print edition, this story appears under the title "Soundtrack" Comment? Email editor@colorado.edu.

Photos by Matt Tyrie (scores); Courtesy Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra

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With the end of the semester right around the corner, CU Boulder's Norlin Library is as busy as ever. The famous Therapy Dogs of Boulder County made their appearance last week to lend students a helping paw ahead of finals. Mark your calendars, they will be back on the following days:

Engineering, Math & Physics Library
Tuesday, April 10, 2-4 p.m.

Business Library
Wednesday, April 18, 2-4 p.m.

Music Library
Thursday, April 26, 2-4 p.m.

Norlin Library
Friday, April 27, 2-4 p.m.

Read more about the therapy dogs' visits. 

Photo by Amanda Clark

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A Century of Views of Colorado: 1820-1920

See the drawings and maps of early Colorado settlers at the CU Boulder Earth Sciences & Map Library in the Benson Building. 

The University Libraries’ exhibit, “A Century of Views of Colorado,” will be on display until May 25, 2018.

According to University Libraries, some of these rare drawings were created by artists accompanying government explorers to highlight economic and migration opportunities of the West to those living in the East. Others were commissioned by private companies.

On March 8, Antiques Roadshow print and map appraiser Christopher W. Lane discussed some of the more unusual maps at an event on campus. 

Learn more. 

Maps and illustrations courtesy University Libraries 

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Snow came to campus early this fall: The first flakes piled up Monday, Oct. 9.

In all, six inches fell in Boulder that day, according to the National Weather Service.

The university operated as normal. Colorado’s famous bluebird sky returned the next morning.

Photo by Glenn Asakawa 

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Children play on the Norlin Quad while visiting campus. CU Boulder stays plenty active from June through August. In addition to summer sessions for students, the campus hosts the annual , conferences and several camps for kids. 

Photo by Glenn Asakawa  

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Serenity is found at the east entrance of Norlin Library in the Sundial Plaza. The plaza leads straight into the bustling Laughing Goat Coffeehouse and the main library. It also contains the John Garrey Tippit Memorial Sundial, dedicated in May 1995 by the John H. Tippit family in honor of thier son John Tippit (A&S'69), who died one year after graduating. 

Photo by Glenn Asakawa 

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Life at CU Boulder shifts gears after commencement but hardly goes dormant. The amphitheater rings with Elizabethan eloquence during the annual Shakespeare festival. Summer session students amble well-trod pathways. This year, for the second in a row, a Grateful Dead offshoot will electrify Folsom Field.

Still, come mid-May, a certain serenity settles over campus. Turtles queue along drifting logs on Varsity Lake. Frisbees arc above open lawns. The libraries close a little earlier.

The pair in this CU Heritage Center photograph, undated but thought to be of 1950s vintage, seem to be making the most of a pleasant day outside Norlin Library.

If you have a favorite memory of CU in summertime, we’d love to hear it. Write editor@colorado.edu. 

Photo courtesy CU Heritage Center

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10 of the Rarest Works in Norlin Library's Special Collections & Archives

1. A leaf from a Latin Bible, "The Dragon Leaf," 1240 CE
2. A leaf from a Gutenberg Bible, 1450-1455 CE 
3. A collection of works by Katibi of Nishapur, c. 1600 CE   
4. Handwritten Latin Bible from Paris, 1210-1220 CE
5. North African handwritten collection of devotions, with chapters of the Quran 
6. Collection of astronomical tables by scholars working under Alfonso X of Castile
7. The Mercator Atlas, 10^th edition, published in 1630 CE
8. Darwin's On the Origin of Species, 1859 CE
9. Deed from the Court of Augmentations, Edward VI (son of Henry VIII), 1547 CE
10. Legal account book of anti-slavery lawyer, Caleb Sipple Layton, in Georgetown, Delaware, 1846-1882 CE

Learn interesting facts about each of these items.

To see these items yourself, visit the Norlin Library Special Collections & Archives. Get hours of operation or schedule an appointment . 

Photo by Lauren Price 

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