The first time she handled old documents as a work-study student in the Peabody Archives, Melissa Wertheimer (MM ’10, Piccolo) was hooked. “I found a letter from [19th-century German conductor] Hans von Bülow and I was like, ‘Wait a minute—this guy was a friend of Beethoven’s. Am I misreading the signature?’” says Wertheimer, who is now a senior music reference specialist at the Library of Congress.
“My grandfather was a printer, my father a pianist and carpenter, so I come from a family with an appreciation for craft—and I was holding letters and scores and photos of composers and performers I knew from history books or recordings I loved. It completely blew my mind,” she says. In those same Peabody archives on the upper floor of the Arthur Friedheim Library, Wertheimer also met alumna Wilda Heiss (TC ’60, BM ’62, AD ’63, MM ’64, Flute), another flutist who’d worked for years at the Library of Congress. Heiss was serving as a volunteer, processing jazz guitarist Charlie Byrd’s papers.
Heiss “planted a seed” for Wertheimer. “She told me there was music at the Library of Congress, that they had Aaron Copland’s papers, Leonard Bernstein’s papers,” Wertheimer says.
After Wertheimer earned her master’s degree at Peabody, she juggled performing and a host of part-time jobs, including teaching for four years at JHU’s Homewood campus—both as a teaching assistant to Richard Giarusso (then chair of Peabody’s Department of Musicology and now dean of academic affairs at the New England Conservatory of Music) and as solo instructor in a class she created called Meet the Music.
She also did a stint in the archives at Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum, where a mentor told her, “You have a gift for this,” and encouraged her to pursue a master’s in library science. She did, and soon after earning her MLIS from University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies in 2017, she heard about an immediate opening at the Library of Congress—the largest music library in the world.
“I didn’t think I’d get the job, but I applied anyway, and I am so glad that they hired me. We have hundreds and hundreds of archival collections in the music division, in addition to rare books and rare scores from the Renaissance to the present.
“I am one of the public-facing people who helps researchers figure out what they need,” she explains. “We get a lot of conductors and performers who come in because they want to compare editions over time, and people who want to know what Jascha Heifetz’s fingerings were for a violin concerto he premiered—because we have his papers, too, which is beautiful.”
Wertheimer shares her insights about the collection by giving lectures and guided tours, writing blog posts, and creating online guides for conductors and other professionals. As a specialist in both new music and digital archiving, she also works on acquiring the papers and digital records of contemporary musicians for the collection.
And she is still juggling jobs. She recently completed a four-year appointment as archivist of the Music Library Association. And with her guitarist/librarian husband, Dave Durden, she is raising 1-year-old Hazel in a home graced with a cat named Kiwi and filled with the music they love.
“Performing has had to take a back seat,” she says, though she played this spring both at the 48th Annual Baltimore Bach Marathon and at the Kennedy Center with Paragon Philharmonia. Wertheimer sees it as all of a piece. “To be human is to create art,” she says, “and being able to have a creative dialogue with someone who came before you is a powerful source of inspiration and meaning. I believe in preserving the stories of people who make art. It’s why I do what I do.”