Carnegie Hall’s Historian Makes a Museum of Music Memories : Culture: The pack rat of the famous concert hall delights in bits and pieces of its colorful past. He qualified for the archivist’s job by reading old programs.

Gino Francesconi, the keeper of the history of Carnegie Hall, has learned to be a detective while aspiring to be a conductor.

As archivist of the famous concert hall, now in its 100th season, he is custodian of a wealth of memorabilia--batons of famous conductors, photographs signed by virtuosi, ticket stubs, flyers, programs and posters.

But he has also collected such items, some of them by tracking down descendants of performers who have trod the Carnegie stage over the last 100 years.

For example, Walter Damrosch’s grandson, Blaine Littell, told Francesconi he had a picture of Isadora Duncan, who danced at Carnegie Hall while his grandfather conducted. When Francesconi visited the grandson in Stockbridge, N.Y., he saw on a wall a framed letter of introduction for Leopold Damrosch, Walter’s father, from composer Franz Liszt.

Asked if Carnegie Hall could borrow the letter, Littell replied: “Take it if it helps you.”

Francesconi considers that letter, introducing to America the father of the man who suggested to Andrew Carnegie that he build a concert hall, the cornerstone of his collection.

He hunted down former employees who worked at the hall in the 1950s, when it was in danger of being torn down, and found the grandson of the first publisher of Carnegie Hall programs. The grandson had kept the original engraving plates, and he donated them.

“Stuff is out there. We have to let people know we need it,” Francesconi said.

Carnegie Hall is celebrating the centennial of its May 5, 1891, opening all this season. Before the hall reopened in December, 1986, after a 1 1/2-year renovation, reporters swarmed, anxious to write about its history. But nobody at Carnegie knew much history. Francesconi, who is now 37, was hired.

Francesconi has nailed down, he thinks, Carnegie Hall’s three most repeated witticisms.

Helen Elman, whose late husband, Mischa, played in Carnegie Hall from 1908 until 1967, recounted how Elman came home chuckling one day, after a rehearsal. He said he had encountered tourists on the street who, seeing his violin case, asked him, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” He told his wife that an impish impulse came over him. He answered: “Practice,” and walked on.

Elman also figures in the anecdote of the intermission conversation at 17-year-old Jascha Heifetz’s Oct. 27, 1917, Carnegie Hall debut. “It’s hot in here,” Elman commented during intermission to his pianist friend, Leopold Godowsky. Godowsky responded: “Not for pianists.”

And there was the time violinist Fritz Kreisler and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff were performing together and Kreisler lost his place. “Where are we?” he whispered. “In Carnegie Hall,” Rachmaninoff whispered back, and kept on playing.

Francesconi started four years ago with a mere four boxes full of “archives,” including records from the booking department back to 1955. He now works with two trained archivists in a big eighth-floor room above the hall. Rows of metal shelves hold boxes of acid-free folders encasing 4,000 items received from more than 700 people. About 90% of the items were donated.

One of Benny Goodman’s daughters gave one of his clarinets. The hall has the oldest trumpet Louis Armstrong had at the time of his death, and about a dozen conductors’ batons, one of them Toscanini’s.

One couple had a few notes in Tchaikovsky’s hand from his “Third Suite” of 1891, which the composer had autographed. “It’s in perfect condition, appraised at $7,500,” Francesconi said. The man who had it said, ‘If you put it in the museum, I’ll give it to you.’ ”

A letter that Carnegie Hall bought from a dealer cleared up the question of why no programs were donated from Mark Twain’s many readings at Carnegie. “It was a letter to Twain’s daughter Clara, a singer,” Francesconi said. “He was telling her if she sings at Carnegie to pay off the house manager not to hand out programs or people will be flipping through programs and not listening to her.”

In March, Carnegie Hall will mount its sixth exhibit of memorabilia outside the hall. In April, it opens its own museum, which patrons can visit before concerts and during intermissions.

Francesconi shows off his prize letter from Liszt, written in German. He translates: “To anyone who still remembers me and looks to me with respect, I wish to give a letter of recommendation to Leopold Damrosch.” Damrosch, a violinist in Liszt’s orchestra in Weimer and also a composer, conductor and teacher, was having trouble supporting his large family so he came, Liszt’s letter in hand, to New York.

Damrosch took a job with a choir, then started his own, the Oratorio Society of New York, which still exists. He then started conducting the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera.

Damrosch died in 1885 and his son, Walter, in his mid-20s, took over his conducting. In 1886, Andrew Carnegie married an alto in the Oratorio Society and they, on their honeymoon, and the Walter Damrosches took the same ship to Europe. Francesconi speculates that the bride and Damrosch ganged up on Carnegie to urge him to build a hall in a city that didn’t have one specifically for orchestra and oratorio music.

Francesconi was hired as Carnegie Hall’s archivist because he was known there. Coming to New York from San Francisco, he enrolled in conducting classes and became a Carnegie Hall usher. Then, for 10 seasons, he was Carnegie’s artists’ assistant. While artists were on stage and Francesconi had nothing to do, he’d read through all the old programs in boxes scattered through the building.

Conductor Riccardo Muti told Francesconi he had better leave his backstage cocoon and study conducting. In 1984 he went to Siena, Italy, and studied until his teacher died two years later. He returned to Carnegie Hall where executive director Judith Arron decided that it would be easier to teach Francesconi what an acid-free folder was than to teach an archivist the history that Francesconi had learned from reading all those programs.

Francesconi spent the summer of 1986 studying conducting with Carlo Maria Giulini and asked his advice about Carnegie Hall’s job offer. “You Americans are always in such a rush,” Giulini said, advising Francesconi to become an archivist now and a conductor later, which he still hopes to do.

For now, he is a detective-archivist.

“It’s so satisfying when you find something,” he said. “But the more you know about the hall the more you realize you have to find.”