Alan’s great-uncle Lester Levy was one of the foremost collectors of sheet music in the United States. He donated his collection of over 30,000 pieces to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, in 1976, adding to it until his death in 1989. After that his relatives and Johns Hopkins took over.
The evolution of the Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection over the decades is an informative microcosm of the evolution of technology in general over the same period.
- 1976: Lester Levy donates his 30,000-piece sheet music collection, including an extensive “card catalog,” to Hopkins. The collection is accessible at its Eisenhower Library.
- 1984: Lester and Hopkins publish a small printed black-and-white “Guide to the Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music.”
- 1994: Alan works with his Levy cousins, Lester’s pianist and new CD read-write technology to create a CD-based “multimedia” version of the Guide. The color Guide includes full scores and professionally-played audio snippets of each highlighted piece.
- 1998: Hopkins publishes the first in a series of websites that make the full Collection available over the internet. The card catalog is replaced by search capability.
- 2001: Alan publishes a web-based multimedia version of the Guide. Some of it even still works.
- 2010: Alan provides technical help as Levy family members work with Hopkins to update the website to include new technologies such as historical and contemporary recordings. Work continues throughout the decade.
- 2019: The Collection and its website have evolved to the point where a curator is needed. Sam Bessen is hired in this role.
- 2020: Of necessity due to the Covid-19 pandemic, streaming technology comes to the collection in the form of a “Hopkins at Home” Zoom-based course run by Sam. Alan, Priscilla and many other Levy relatives attend.
- 2022: Back from the pandemic, Hopkins stages a four-month traditional exhibition of the Collection.
- 2025: New AI (artificial intelligence) technologies beckon myriad possibilities for the Collection. Some envisioned long ago (for instance automated playback of any score), and some not imagined until now. Watch this space!