Late Composer’s Stuff to be Sold Electronically

(Here was a scoop I got … that everyone ignored until they all picked up a less detailed version from AP.)

With the passing last month of composer Roger Horvath, American music closed the songbook on one of its more memorable chapters. And with Horvath’s death just a short week later, the rest of us came to mourn one of the great losses of 20th-century artistry.

But when E-Bay announced yesterday that the family would be offering key memorabilia from Horvath’s estate on the internet, there came the alluring possibility that anyone could own, and place in the old curio cabinet, a tactile legacy of popular culture from one of the greats.

Best known for his Broadway scores setting Tin Pan Alley melodies within an atonal structure, Horvath had a reputation in his private life as the “pack rat’s pack rat,” although he was referred to by his good friend Richard Rodgers as “the prairie dog’s alley cat,” and often went by the nickname (origin unknown) of “the nanny goat’s second aunt.” Cryptically, the artist called himself – in a Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of his pithy liner notes – “Basil Rathbone.” Over his long life, he kept practically every item he ever encountered, and constructed a 20-room French Chateau to house the objects directly across the street from his primary residence, a Dutch-style home in a Bellflower, CA, subdivision. It is this lifetime’s worth of possessions that will go on the block come summer.

And what a bunch of stuff it is:

The composer’s souvenir spoon collection, for instance, which features a special grouping of decorative utensils from the Amana Colonies in Iowa, and of which Stravinsky once remarked, “God, that’s a lot of spoons.” (The collection, by the way, will not be broken up and sold individually, as had been reported, both for historical reasons and to save a lot of time.) Also included is the settee on which Horvath reportedly tried to seduce actress Shirley Booth, whom he sincerely thought was a maid named Hazel, based on the television character she played, and whom he deserted upon learning she was actually an Academy-Award-winning star, since he had vowed never to go out with another artist.

Horvath enjoyed a reputation as one of the country’s finest art collectors, and his practice of taking a different painting from his personal gallery to parties as his date is still fondly recalled by the dizzying circles he ran in. His tastes ran from the sublime to the stillborn, with a particular fondness for the Dadaists – specifically their “non-art” pieces invoking, and involving, plumbing fixtures. This special interest will be highlighted in a pre-auction sale held at a local Home Depot.

An additional offering will be Horvath’s 5,000 picture postcards, all depicting two-headed snakes from various roadside attractions in the Midwest.

Among the household items up for sale will be the blender he used to whip up the Brussels sprout concoctions he adored, and that provided Horvath with the right pitch for the infamous 80-minute overture to his Tony-nominated (and then -expelled) musical Tab to Margin. Plus, his egg coddler, and many of the eggs left behind in his refrigerator.

Of special note, artistically, is his final work, sure to fetch a high price, 13 pieces of blank paper that he liked to refer to as "my 13 pieces of blank paper."

The sale will commence this June, unless, as a family spokesperson pointed out, “We change our mind.”