Henri Lazarof Living Legacy

About the Henri Lazarof Archives

Sheet music written in pen

Announcing the launch of Henri Lazarof: A Life in Music, a digital exhibit presented by University Archives & Special Collections! This exhibit celebrates Lazarof's distinguished career as represented in his archival collection housed here at Brandeis. In this exhibit, you will find digitized manuscripts, audio clips, photographs, posters, interviews, awards, documents and more. Many recordings and manuscript compositions from the collection have been digitized and can also be found on the Brandeis Distinctive Collections page. A companion physical exhibit will be launched soon.

Brandeis is honored to be the home of the Henri Lazarof Archives. The collection consists, in part, of 170 hard-copy manuscripts and related materials spanning Mr. Lazarof's entire career. The archive also contains some 389 media production materials (audio and video) relating to Mr. Lazarof's compositional career. The media collection offers a glimpse into a composer's craft and methodology, including interviews with the composer discussing his compositions. Also included are examples of the composer conducting his own works.

In addition to music and audio materials, the archives include valuable biographical materials that chronicle Mr. Lazarof's life and work, such as historic concert programs, press clippings, photographs, his writings, notes and business correspondence, all constituting a unique history archive of 20th-century music and musicians as seen from the perspective of a leading figure, active worldwide.

Finally, the archive contains over 200 letters sent to Mr. Lazarof by notable composers, conductors, musicians and musical colleagues spanning his entire career in Europe and the United States. The letters offer insight into Mr. Lazarof's composing methodology as he discusses performance matters with soloists and conductors who are performing his compositions, as well as general musical matters with his colleagues.