Special Collections
Paul Creston Collection

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Biographical Sketch | Photographs | Additional Library Resources

Paul Creston (1906-1985) was a well-known composer in his day who made rhythm the cornerstone of his work. Born to Italian immigrant parents in New York City, he was essentially a self-taught composer because of poor family finances. In addition to composing, Creston worked as a movie theater organist and was organist at St. Malachy's Church in New York from 1934 to 1967. In 1968, he became artist-in-residence at Central Washington State College. During this time, he appeared as guest conductor and lecturer at over 40 colleges and universities across the country.

Creston wrote 120 compositions with opus numbers and over 35 orchestral works including 6 symphonies. He is especially recognized for his contributions to the literature of neglected instruments such as marimba, trombone, harp, accordion, and saxophone. Creston also composed works without opus numbers, especially for radio, television, and film. He composed for the Philco Hall of Fame and also contributed scores to the CBS-TV series The Twentieth Century. In addition, Creston wrote numerous articles in music journals and authored two books: Principles of Rhythm and Rational Metric Notation.

There are approximately 45,900 items in the Paul Creston Collection including personal scrapbooks and diaries, photographs, sound recordings and taped interviews. The sound recordings were originally on reel-to-reel tapes, records, or compact discs, but all these recordings have been transferred to cassette tapes. The original recordings can be found in the Marr Sound Archives and the cassette tapes can be found at the Music/Media circulation desk, where they can be checked out for listening on cassette players in the library. All other material from the Paul Creston Collection is held in the Department of Special Collections.

Special Collections is a non-circulating and non-browsing resource center. The Special Collections Reading Room is open to researchers Monday through Friday during the academic year. Public service hours for the current semester are listed at http://library.umkc.edu/spec-col/index.html#hours but researchers are encouraged to call ahead for verification of hours due to University intersessions and other events. Special Collections is located on the fourth floor of the Miller Nichols Library at 5100 Rockhill Road in Kansas City, Missouri. All inquiries concerning access to the collections should be addressed to Special Collections Library Information Specialists Teresa Gipson or Kelly McEniry.