By Katherine Krueger

One of the best parts of being a College-Conservatory of Music student working in the Archives & Rare Books Library is learning about the history of UC, in particular CCM. The personal papers of tenor Arthur Herndon, one of the first African Americans to receive a bachelor’s degree from the College Conservatory of Music (1961), have now been processed and are available in the ARB library. Mr. Herndon was born in Cincinnati’s West End in 1932 and received his early musical training in school and church choirs. In 1946 at the age of 14, Mr. Herndon made his performance debut singing the role of the wren in Gabriel Pierne’s St Francis of Assisi in the Cincinnati May Festival.  Mr. Herndon attended Miami University on a voice scholarship and after being honorably discharged from the Army following the Korean War, he enrolled at the College Conservatory of Music.  Following his graduation from CCM, Mr. Herndon embarked upon a successful career as a lyric tenor in Europe, singing a variety of roles from Ottavio in Don Giovanni to Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly. While in Europe Mr. Herndon continued his studies at the Rome Opera House and the Hochschule fur Musik in Berlin. Mr. Herndon held fest* contracts in 1963 with the Stadtstheater in Kassel and the Bremerhaven Opera in 1967. Upon his return to the United States in the late 1970s, Mr. Herndon held a teaching position at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio before returning to CCM for his graduate studies in choral conducting.  In

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1981 Mr. Herndon received his Master of Music in choral conducting from CCM and taught at Talladega College throughout the 1980s. In his later years, Mr. Herndon acted as music minister for Mt Calvary Methodist Church. The collection contains Mr. Herndon’s personal papers from his years teaching at Talladega College, his graduate studies at CCM, and many programs from his performances as a soloist and conductor. In addition there are a number of works by local female composer Zenobia Powell Perry which Mr. Herndon collected and performed throughout his career.  A finding aid for this collection is available on the OhioLINK Finding Aid Repository.

*A contract signed with an opera house in which a performer is contracted to sing multiple roles with a company in one season.