Emily Motta Sheet Music Collection Recently Opened

The Archives staff recently completed processing the Emily Motta Sheet Music Collection, which is now a part of the Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese-American Archives (collection MC 103). Emily Motta, the daughter of João Carlos da Motta, was a graduate of the New England Conservatory (Boston) who had a fairly successful career as a piano and singing teacher in New Bedford during the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s; she was also the organist for Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception Church. The collection consists of sheet music for twenty-six Portuguese language songs published between 1915 and 1935.  It was donated to the archives by her great-nephew, Arthur Motta.