Maude Cuney Hare (b. 1874 d. 1936), music historian, concert pianist, folklorist, lecturer, author, and educator, completed her formal training in music at the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, Massachusetts in 1895. After graduation, she taught for a few years at the Texas Deaf, Dumb and Blind Institute in Austin, the Settlement Program of the Institutional Church of Chicago, and Prairie View State Normal and Industrial Colleges for Negroes in Texas. In 1906 she returned to Boston, where she married and resided the rest of her life. She traveled extensively and as a folklorist collected songs from the South, New Orleans, Mexico, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Cuba. Cuney Hare is most known for her research and writings. She is credited with bringing New Orleans Creole music to the attention of the American concert public. Her book, Creole Songs was published in 1921. Also, she edited the music column in Crisis magazine and published articles in such periodicals as Musical America, Musical Quarterly and the Christian Science Monitor. Her book, Negro Musicians and Their Music (c. 1936) remains a respected reference work on African American music.

This small collection of papers represents some of the music Maud Cuney Hare collected and composed. There are printed and handwritten manuscripts of Negro spirituals, minstrel songs and other compositions including some by such notables as H.T. Burleigh, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, W.C. Handy, J. Rosamond Johnson, and Clarence Cameron White. There are also several unpublished manuscripts of arrangements by Maud Cuney Hare.