The turn of the twentieth century was a watershed for music at Yale. The School of Music (YSM) had been established and conferred its first degrees, fifty years after the first music course was taught at the university by a German immigrant named Gustave Stoeckel, thanks to an endowment from the Battell family. By 1894, Stoeckel had retired, and composer Horatio Parker had arrived in New Haven, and, along with pianist Samuel Simons Sanford, began to grow the nascent program. That same year, thanks to the efforts of another German immigrant—a local musical instrument dealer named Morris Steinert—the New Haven Symphony Orchestra was founded with Parker as its conductor.

In 1900, Steinert gave Yale a collection of musical instruments, mostly keyboards, with which to bolster its music programs, and thus was born a resource befitting a leading university.

Fast forward to 2021: As part of the For Humanity campaign, Morris Steinert’s great-great-grandson Timothy Steinert ’82, along with his wife, Lixia Zhang, gave the collection an endowment that will allow YSM, under whose auspices the museum operates, to significantly enhance and expand on its offerings. In recognition, the collection is now known as the Morris Steinert Collection of Musical Instruments.

This generous gift has enabled the school to reimagine and extend the scope of the collection as a teaching museum where performance and scholarship are enhanced by in-person and digital access to the collection’s remarkable holdings. The endowment supports new curricular initiatives and professional collaborations, bolsters conservation efforts, and helped to fund improvements to 15 Hillhouse Avenue, which houses the collection.

Tim Steinert, brother to Alexandra Steinert-Evoy ’90 MDiv and John Steinert ’93 MBA, recognized that the collection’s history is tied inextricably to the legacy of music at Yale and in New Haven. And he saw an opportunity to celebrate that legacy and his family’s role therein.

“I wanted in particular to commemorate the role music has played in bringing Yale and the New Haven community together through the founding of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra and the contribution to music scholarship and practice at Yale,” he says.

“I see the school as being a passionate advocate for the collection, not just for Yale but for the whole of music,” former YSM Dean Robert Blocker says. Pointing to Morris Steinert’s donation of instruments in 1900 and to subsequent gifts and acquisitions, Blocker explained that “these things happen because people who have items that are important to civilization want to ensure that they are preserved in some way.”