A gift to share: Louise Homer and family

Ernie Stires came from a prestigious lineage of musicians. Ernie’s cousin was legendary American composer Samuel Barber,  widely known for his piece Adagio For Strings (or Agnus Dei, for voices arranged by the composer). Louise Homer, Ernie’s grandmother, was a world-class contraltist who sang at the Metropolitan Opera in New York for 30 years. Her husband (and Ernie’s grandfather), Sydney Homer, was an American art song composer of note, writing many vocal pieces for his wife to sing on her world tours (which was no small feat for a performing artist living over a hundred years ago). The list goes on…

Grandmother Louise was also one of the earliest recording artists for Victor’s Red Seal label from 1905 through the 1920s. Led by the great tenor Enrico Caruso, Red Seal Records featured many of the famous opera singers of the day. These recordings can be hard to come by, usually found in forgotten stacks in the bowels of antique barns.  Which is exactly where I was (Peters’ Auction Barn, Jeffersonville, NY) when I hit the jackpot and bought up every one I could find as a gift to Ernie for his 80th birthday.

Since Ernie’s passing I have often wondered where those records ended up.  Hopefully in the possession of a family member who will treasure them and pass them down through the generations as a reminder of how musically gifted their gene pool really is.  For the rest of us, we can now find them here. Thanks to analog-to-digital transfer skills of Tim Ecker, many early recordings made by Ernie’s world-famous grandmother Louise Homer are finally available on Archive.org. The collection includes Ms. Homer singing alongside fellow Met performer Caruso, among others.

I especially admire the delicate arrangement of Schubert’s ‘Du bist die Ruh’ sung as a duet by Mme. Homer and her daughter, Ernie’s mother, Louise Homer Stires.

While you’re visiting Archive.org, you might be interested in sifting through the Prelinger Archives. This collection of old television commercials and corporate videos is guaranteed to provide hours of entertainment, if not a worthy history lesson in advertisement. In addition, the entire collection is in the public domain. Sample-based artists, take heed.