Seton Hill University to work with University of Pittsburgh on Music Preservation Project
Seton Hill University will be working with the University of Pittsburgh’s University Library System to help preserve approximately 200 songs created by a prolific Pittsburgh-based musician, Charles H. Pace, thanks to a nearly $190,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Associate Professor of Music Mark A. Boyle will be collaborating with Christopher Lynch, Ph.D., head of the Theodore M. Finney Music Library at the University of Pittsburgh, which houses the Charles and Frankie Pace Collection, one of the earliest archives of modern Black gospel music.
The collection consists mostly of printing plates that Pace used to publish his own music. From their home base in Pittsburgh, Pace and his wife Frankie built a nationwide distribution network of Black-owned stores that fueled gospel’s rise in the 1940s and 1950s, but almost none of his own music was preserved or recorded and it fell out of use after his death in 1963. His original printing plates were later rescued from the trash and found their way to the University of Pittsburgh, but were not usable to print music in their current state.
Lynch began a project to promote research and use of the ULS’s Charles and Frankie Pace Collection in 2021. In 2023, the library co-sponsored the first Pace concert in more than sixty years. This past summer, the library made studio recordings of six additional songs with local professionals; the scores used as the basis for these recordings were new editions created by Boyle. The goal of the project is to create a critical edition of Pace’s complete songs which will help support performances and recordings by professional ensembles and school, community, and church choirs.
Lynch, a friend and musical colleague of Boyle, reached out for assistance with the transcription process due to Boyle’s work in the choral world. Boyle, who owns a digital choral music publishing company, also had a great deal of experience with modern engraving applications.
After making decisions on various aspects of how the music will appear on the page – referred to in the field as style choices – Boyle and at least two Seton Hill students will take the original source material and enter everything into Sibelius, one of the standard professional engraving software titles. This process, called engraving, involves reading original printing plates, older editions, and images of the plates, to create modern editions suitable for performance by modern choirs, but also containing critical notes about the history of the piece, source material, and editorial choices.
“This is a highly detailed process that involves putting each note into music engraving software individually,” Boyle said. “Seton Hill music students will assist with this process, gaining knowledge both about the engraving process itself and the features of early Gospel music, learning through music that was originally created right here in western Pennsylvania.”
Associate Professor of Music Mark A. Boyle will be collaborating with Christopher Lynch, Ph.D., head of the Theodore M. Finney Music Library at the University of Pittsburgh, which houses the Charles and Frankie Pace Collection, one of the earliest archives of modern Black gospel music.
The collection consists mostly of printing plates that Pace used to publish his own music. From their home base in Pittsburgh, Pace and his wife Frankie built a nationwide distribution network of Black-owned stores that fueled gospel’s rise in the 1940s and 1950s, but almost none of his own music was preserved or recorded and it fell out of use after his death in 1963. His original printing plates were later rescued from the trash and found their way to the University of Pittsburgh, but were not usable to print music in their current state.
Lynch began a project to promote research and use of the ULS’s Charles and Frankie Pace Collection in 2021. In 2023, the library co-sponsored the first Pace concert in more than sixty years. This past summer, the library made studio recordings of six additional songs with local professionals; the scores used as the basis for these recordings were new editions created by Boyle. The goal of the project is to create a critical edition of Pace’s complete songs which will help support performances and recordings by professional ensembles and school, community, and church choirs.
Lynch, a friend and musical colleague of Boyle, reached out for assistance with the transcription process due to Boyle’s work in the choral world. Boyle, who owns a digital choral music publishing company, also had a great deal of experience with modern engraving applications.
After making decisions on various aspects of how the music will appear on the page – referred to in the field as style choices – Boyle and at least two Seton Hill students will take the original source material and enter everything into Sibelius, one of the standard professional engraving software titles. This process, called engraving, involves reading original printing plates, older editions, and images of the plates, to create modern editions suitable for performance by modern choirs, but also containing critical notes about the history of the piece, source material, and editorial choices.
“This is a highly detailed process that involves putting each note into music engraving software individually,” Boyle said. “Seton Hill music students will assist with this process, gaining knowledge both about the engraving process itself and the features of early Gospel music, learning through music that was originally created right here in western Pennsylvania.”