Spreading a Love of Music : Donation: A Beverly Hills philanthropist has chosen UCSD music library to house her collection of letters, scores and concert programs from trend-setting American composers.

“The patron saint of new-music life in California” has answered the prayers of UC San Diego’s music department.

Beverly Hills philanthropist Betty Freeman will donate her library of contemporary music scores, composers’ correspondence and autographed concert programs to the school’s music library.

The university announced the gift Friday and will salute Freeman on April 16 with an exhibition at the UCSD library of her photographs of composers. After the exhibition opening, UCSD’s contemporary music ensemble SONOR will perform a concert in her honor.

An avid patron of avant-garde music, Freeman has supported new music performance since the early 1960s, commissioning about 30 compositions.

“She is the patron saint for new-music life in California,” said Ara Guzelimian, artistic administrator of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “I cannot underestimate her importance. She supported composers such as John Cage and John Adams at a point in their careers when they were still undiscovered. Her concern for composers’ welfare encompassed financial support as well as personal kindnesses.”

Freeman’s personal library contains 200 letters from a rich cross-section of trend-setting American composers, including John Cage, John Adams, Virgil Thomson, Terry Riley and La Monte Young. The collection’s inventory lists 50 signed recordings, 100 signed programs, posters, books, videos, and two drawings by John Cage. A university spokesperson said the school could not yet name a value for the collection, which has not yet been appraised.

“I collected art in the 1950s,” Freeman said in a phone interview Saturday. Her father’s company, Witco Corp., a New York-based chemical and petroleum products firm, provides her the means to carry on the family’s philanthropic tradition. “Then in 1961, I became interested in new music through the work of La Monte Young. Ten years ago, I started to commission music instead of buying paintings.”

Although Freeman had minored in music as a Wellesley undergraduate, her initial contact with the world of contemporary American music was completely unrelated to the art form. Young, a radical composer noted for his contributions to conceptual art and anti-music, ran afoul of the law, and Freeman contributed to his legal defense fund.

“He had been arrested for driving with marijuana in Connecticut, and some of my friends in the art world asked me to support his law case,” Freeman explained. “I sent $100, which was a considerable sum then, and that got me involved with his music.”

Freeman chose UCSD to receive her collection because John Stewart, former provost of UCSD’s Muir College and founder of the university’s music department, approached her five years ago. She did not consider any other school or conservatory as possible beneficiary.

“They asked me, and I jumped at the opportunity. In my opinion, they’re the best music department in the whole university system.”

According to Lynda Claassen, head of the UCSD library’s special collections, Freeman’s gift will complement the UCSD library’s holdings of personal and professional papers of composer Ernst Krenek, musicologist Peter Yates and jazz musician Calvin Jackson.

One of the major patrons of UCSD’s 1986 Pacific Ring Festival, Freeman traced her association with the university back to the 1960s when she supported American composer Harry Partch.

“I was involved with Partch’s music from 1964-74. Partch was regents professor at UCSD once, and I believe they let him keep a studio there for a while.”

Freeman also championed UCSD emeritus professor Robert Erickson, commissioning his large orchestral work “Auroras,” which was premiered in 1965 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Leonard Slatkin.

Another UCSD connection is through faculty violinist Janos Negyesy, who has premiered and regularly performs both sets of Cage’s daunting “Freeman” Etudes, named for the commissioner. Last July, Freeman joined Cage and Negyesy in Ferrara, Italy, for the premiere of the second set of “Freeman” Etudes.

“They were really quite well received. People sat quietly and nobody left,” she said.

Freeman noted that the content of her composers’ correspondence varied greatly. Letters from Cage, whose most celebrated piece “4’ 33” “ is total silence, are understandably terse.

“But letters from John Adams and Steve Reich, for example, discuss problems they faced writing their works,” Freeman added.

In 1981, Freeman began a monthly concert series in her Beverly Hills home devoted to new music. Like Arnold Schonberg’s private concerts in Vienna at the turn of the century, Freeman’s musical evenings presented the most uncompromising new music for an invited audience of cognoscenti.

“At these concerts, we would often hear a work in progress,” the Philharmonic’s Guzelimian noted. “She was amazingly egalitarian in her taste. One Sunday we would hear (French composer Pierre) Boulez, and the next time it might be a couple of composers in their early 20s. I recall one session with Peter Sellars and John Adams long before their opera ‘Death of Klinghoffer’ premiered. They talked about their new opera and Adams played a home recording of some of the scenes from the opera.”

Among the UCSD resident composers featured at these musical evenings were Will Odgen, Roger Reynolds, Brian Ferneyhough and Robert Erickson.

“I would invite about 100 people to each concert, including composers, performers and the heads of local performing arts organizations,” Freeman said. “The only prerequisite was that they like music.”

Guzelimian noted that the rewards from supporting contemporary music are less tangible than those of purchasing avant garde art.

“You have nothing to hang on your wall to show for your it,” he said.

Freeman, however, has no regrets.

“I love classical music. My contribution of energy, enthusiasm and dollars is my way of putting something back into music.”