With some 90,000 objects - some dating back to the mid 17th Century - Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library is a repository for the artifacts of the nation’s past.
But, this weekend, Winterthur plays host to something new, innovative, and very much in the now. Taking the stage Sunday are six college students from across the country, all composers of new music.
And while Winterthur is commonly associated with great American art, Reggie Lynch, Director of Interpretation and Engagement, says the museum has a long association with music.
“Winterthur has a really amazing history with music," Lynch said. "Henry Francis DuPont was our founder, and Ruth DuPont who was Henry Francis Dupont's wife - she was actually a classically trained pianist and she was a composer.”
The Ruth Wales du Pont Collegiate Composition Competition was open to college students from around the US. After a rigorous audition process, six finalists in classical and pop music were chosen and their works will be heard on Sunday. There, a panel of judges and the concert audience will vote on the best piece of new music.
Performing the music will be the professional musicians of the American Pops Orchestra. Luke Frazier is the orchestra’s founder and music director.
“I started thinking about how can we honor her legacy and honor her excellence while also staying true to our mission of providing more access points for people in the orchestra world," Frazier said. "And so Winterthur partnered with us and we created this way to kind of honor her legacy while also providing the chance for young composers to show off their work.”
One of those young composers who made it through the audition process is a student at UD. Robbie Strauss is a senior, majoring in music composition and flute performance.
“His work is beautiful," Frazier said. "Incredibly powerful, and it so happened that after we selected our finalists without knowing, we had picked an outstanding student from University of Delaware. So we're so happy to have him in the competition alongside the five other competitors.”
In addition to hosting the contest and concert, Winterthur also provided the impetus for each work.
“Each of the composers has selected something from Winterthur as inspiration, which is perfect because inspiration is part of what we do here at Winterthur," Lynch said.
It’s easy to think about works like those in Winterthur’s collection as frozen in time, but Lynch says the process of curating and maintaining the collection is one of constant reinterpretation of the objects and their significance through the lens of the times. The composition competition is one way to do that.
“We constantly have people interpreting these centuries, centuries old objects in new ways," Lynch said.
Like the collection at the Winterthur, classical music is also evolving and growing. Frazier says it’s a thriving art form.
“I think all too often people think that classical music stopped many many years ago and that it isn't a living and breathing thing," he said. "And I think also that we are able to provide the chance to say no, all of this music is a continuum.”
That means the works of art in the Winterthur will have another, musical, chapter added to their histories.
“There's something really beautiful about thinking that these objects now have this as part of their story, that they're being interpreted musically as part of their life," says Lynch.
Delaware Public Media's arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.
