Search

Series I contains an extensive collection of Powell's music from the mid-'40s to the early '90s, variously in the form of sketches, masters, photocopies, and publications. Powell's manuscripts are themselves a history of the technology of music reproduction. Up through the 1960s, Powell made master copies in india ink on transparent paper, and then produced blueprints from these masters. By the early 1980s, improved photocopiers enabled him to write his master copies with pencil on ordinary paper. Just a few years later, he began using a Macintosh computer; the voluminous sketches for "Duplicates" are mostly computer printouts. Some of Powell's published works have been professionally engraved, but many are reproductions of his own impeccable calligraphy.