Mana-Zucca
Updated: 4 days ago
Some composers spend their childhoods quietly discovering music. Mana-Zucca apparently began hers by arguing with a piano.
Born in New York City on Christmas Day, December 25, 1885, she entered the world as Gussie Zuckermann, the youngest of six children born to Polish immigrant parents. Over the years, her name would appear in several variations, including Gizella, Augusta, and eventually the delightfully theatrical Mana-Zucca. Even her birth year became something of a moving target, with various publications reporting dates ranging from 1885 to the 1890s. Mana-Zucca, who enjoyed cultivating a little mystery about her age, did little to clear up the confusion.
But there was never much doubt about her extraordinary musical gifts.
At the age of three, she was playing with a toy piano when she discovered a serious design flaw. Attempting to reproduce a melody in G major, she reached for F-sharp, only to discover that the black keys were merely painted onto the instrument. The necessary note simply did not exist.
"This piano's no good!" she protested, reportedly searching underneath the instrument for the missing note.
A family guest recognized that the little girl's frustration might indicate perfect pitch. Her parents soon provided a real piano, and what began as a childhood tantrum became the first chapter in an extraordinary musical career.
It is difficult to imagine a more appropriate introduction to Mana-Zucca. Throughout her life, she would display the same combination of musical instinct, stubborn determination, humor, and unwillingness to accept anything less than what she wanted.
From Child Prodigy to Concert Pianist
Mana-Zucca's musical education began almost immediately. Her earliest teachers included a neighbor named Patotnikoff and the Russian-born musician Platon Brounoff. By the age of four, she was already giving public performances and had attracted the attention of New York's musical establishment.
She eventually came under the guidance of Alexander Lambert, a distinguished Polish pianist and teacher whose own musical background was closely associated with the great nineteenth-century virtuoso tradition. Lambert became considerably more than a teacher. He served as her mentor, helped direct her career, and imposed the rigorous practice discipline expected of a serious concert pianist.
The results were remarkable.
Contemporary accounts described her appearing as a piano soloist with major orchestras while still a young girl. One of her most frequently repeated accomplishments was a performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 with an orchestra conducted by Walter Damrosch. Although promotional accounts placed her age at just eight, conflicting biographical dates make the exact age uncertain.
Whatever her actual age, the achievement was extraordinary. While most children were struggling through their first piano exercises, Mana-Zucca was already performing music that would challenge accomplished adult musicians.
She also began composing almost as soon as she began performing. Her early compositions reportedly included Moment Musicale for violin and piano and the technically demanding Etude de Concert, both associated with her childhood years.
These were not simply exercises intended to demonstrate a gifted child's cleverness. They marked the emergence of a musician who would eventually produce an enormous catalog of original works.
Mana-Zucca later compared her early celebrity to that of Shirley Temple. The comparison was surprisingly appropriate. She had spent so much time around distinguished musicians and prominent adults that an ordinary childhood was largely foreign to her.
She once recalled that people were astonished to discover she had known their grandparents. The explanation, she cheerfully pointed out, was that she had been five years old while the grandparents were already seventy.
She had simply started collecting famous acquaintances unusually early.
Europe, Busoni, and a Young Woman With Plenty of Nerve
As a young woman, Mana-Zucca traveled to Europe with her older sister Beatrice, known as Bess. The sisters spent considerable time in Berlin, then one of the most exciting centers of European musical life.
There, she entered a world populated by celebrated pianists, composers, conductors, and teachers. Her studies and musical encounters included such formidable figures as Leopold Godowsky, Josef Weiss, and Ferruccio Busoni.
Her European career included successful performances in Germany, Russia, France, England, and Holland. She also collaborated with the Spanish violinist Juan Manén, developing the kind of international performing experience that few American musicians of her generation could claim.
Yet perhaps the most entertaining stories from these years concern her encounters with the musical establishment.
At one of Busoni's master classes, Mana-Zucca prepared to perform Raff's Gigue und Variationen. A fellow pianist, Michael von Zadora, warned her that the selection was unsuitable for such an important occasion. Surely she should play something more substantial by Beethoven or another universally acknowledged master.
Mana-Zucca ignored the advice.
According to her later recollection, Busoni showed considerable interest in the unfamiliar piece and praised her performance. The delighted young pianist responded by sticking out her tongue at Zadora.
It was hardly the conventional behavior expected of a young lady pursuing a serious musical career. But convention was never Mana-Zucca's strongest interest.
Another favorite story involved the legendary violinist Joseph Joachim. Hoping to persuade him to attend her Berlin debut, she reportedly visited his home uninvited and personally offered him complimentary tickets. Such a bold approach to a musician of Joachim's stature was considered highly improper.
Joachim attended anyway.
These encounters reveal something important about Mana-Zucca's personality. She respected great musicians and understood the traditions they represented, but she was rarely intimidated by them. She possessed an extraordinary confidence in her talent, an instinct for attracting attention, and an almost theatrical ability to turn an ordinary encounter into a memorable event.
Those qualities would serve her well in a career that extended far beyond the concert platform.
From the Concert Hall to Broadway
Mana-Zucca was not content with being an accomplished pianist. She also possessed an attractive singing voice, a lively stage presence, and a taste for theatrical adventure.
During her European years, she studied singing and eventually attracted the attention of operetta composer Franz Lehár. After hearing her perform one of his songs at a social gathering, Lehár reportedly encouraged her to pursue a theatrical engagement.
The resulting career took her into the world of musical comedy and operetta, where she appeared in productions including Lehár's The Count of Luxembourg and Rudolf Friml's High Jinks.
Back in America, she also appeared on Broadway, sharing the stage with entertainers including Clifton Webb and Will Rogers.
For a musician trained in the demanding traditions of European concert performance, this was quite a transformation. One evening she might be immersed in the intricate piano writing of Liszt or Brahms; another might find her singing, acting, or participating in a musical comedy.
Her theatrical career also helped shape her musical personality. She developed a keen understanding of entertainment, timing, melody, and the importance of communicating directly with an audience.
These qualities would eventually become unmistakable features of her piano compositions.
Some of her music is openly virtuosic, some tenderly lyrical, and some mischievously humorous. But even her more serious works frequently possess a strong sense of character, as though the composer were introducing a new personality onto the stage.
For Mana-Zucca, music was never merely an intellectual exercise. It was something to be experienced, enjoyed, and shared.
Reinventing Herself as Mana-Zucca
Somewhere along the way, Gussie Zuckermann decided that her name required a little improvement.
She had previously performed under the name Augusta Zuckermann, but neither the name assigned at birth nor the more formal Augusta seemed to capture the personality she wished to project.
The solution was Mana-Zucca, a distinctive stage name fashioned by rearranging elements of her family name.
It was short, memorable, and intriguingly cosmopolitan. Audiences and reviewers sometimes assumed that she was Italian, Hungarian, or from some other European background.
For a performer who understood the value of theatrical presentation, the name was a small masterpiece of personal branding.
More importantly, it announced the emergence of a woman determined to define herself rather than allow tradition to do it for her.
By this time, she had already established herself as a concert pianist, singer, and stage performer. But her greatest body of work still lay ahead.
The Composer Takes Center Stage
Although Mana-Zucca had been composing since childhood, her identity as a composer gradually became increasingly important.
In 1919, she appeared as soloist in a performance of her own Piano Concerto in New York. The event represented a significant achievement for a woman composer working at a time when major musical institutions remained overwhelmingly dominated by men.
The concerto demonstrated ambitions extending well beyond salon miniatures or popular songs. Mana-Zucca was thoroughly familiar with the large-scale Romantic concerto tradition, and she was determined to participate in it as a creator as well as a performer.
Her musical interests were remarkably broad. Over the course of her long career, she composed more than a thousand works, according to contemporary accounts. These included operas, orchestral compositions, concertos, chamber music, songs, and hundreds of pieces for solo piano.
Her output included two operas, Hypatia and The Queue of Ki-Lu, as well as a Violin Concerto written for the American violinist Joan Field.
Yet for all these large-scale ambitions, Mana-Zucca remained particularly attracted to the piano.
It was the instrument on which she had first discovered music, the instrument that had carried her onto international concert stages, and the instrument through which she could express nearly every aspect of her personality.
Her piano works would ultimately range from substantial sonatas and brilliant concert pieces to charming miniatures intended for domestic performance or musical study.
And unlike composers who confined themselves to a single established style, Mana-Zucca seemed equally comfortable with Romantic lyricism, sparkling virtuosity, popular musical gestures, and a mischievous sense of humor.
The Piano Music: Romantic Beauty With a Mischievous Streak
For modern pianists discovering Mana-Zucca, perhaps the most surprising quality of her music is its immediate appeal.
Much of her piano writing belongs to the late-Romantic tradition, rich in expressive melodies, colorful harmonies, and a delight in the possibilities of the instrument. There are echoes of the musical world of Chopin, Liszt, and the European salon, but also an unmistakably American taste for accessibility and entertainment.
Her Valse Brillante, Op. 20, is a wonderful example of her early style. The piece combines graceful waltz rhythms with the sparkling passagework expected of a virtuoso concert pianist. It is elegant, technically assured, and written with the confidence of someone who understood exactly how to make a piano sound impressive.
At the other extreme of her personality lies the wonderfully eccentric Fugato-Humoresque on the Theme of "Dixie," Op. 21. Here, Mana-Zucca takes the historically loaded Civil War-era tune and subjects it to lively contrapuntal treatment. The result is an unusual mixture of classical technique, popular melody, and musical showmanship.
It is also an intriguing reminder of the cultural environment in which she worked, when popular American songs and concert-hall traditions frequently intersected in ways that can seem surprising or uncomfortable today.
Other works reveal a more poetic side.
Her Prelude, Op. 73, unfolds through warm harmonies and expressive melodic writing. The piece demonstrates her gift for creating a convincing emotional atmosphere within a relatively modest span of time.
Poème, Op. 37, ventures into more introspective territory, while Wistaria, Op. 38, No. 1, offers delicate keyboard writing and a lighter touch.
Then there are works such as The Zouaves' Drill, Op. 68, with its sharply articulated rhythms and vivid character, and Bolero de Concert, Op. 72, No. 2, which reflects her taste for dramatic gesture and instrumental brilliance. Mana-Zucca later recalled that the celebrated pianist Artur Rubinstein had inspired the latter piece.
Her compositions frequently suggest the influence of a pianist who had spent years captivating audiences. The music tends to lie naturally under the hands while producing effects that sound far more complicated than they necessarily are.
This was not an accident. Mana-Zucca knew the keyboard intimately, and she understood the difference between writing music that merely looked impressive on paper and music that truly came alive in performance.
Although her shorter character pieces are especially attractive, her piano sonatas reveal a composer interested in larger musical forms and more sustained development. Her later Third Sonata, which she regarded as one of her finest achievements, ventured toward a more adventurous harmonic language than many of her earlier works.
The contrast is fascinating. Here was a composer celebrated for cheerful melodies and charming salon pieces who was also capable of writing serious, ambitious piano music.
That dual personality may be one of the keys to understanding her enormous creative output.
A Piano Piece for Every Day of the Year
Of all Mana-Zucca's contributions to the solo piano repertoire, perhaps none better demonstrates her sheer productivity than My Musical Calendar.
The idea was as simple as it was extraordinary: a collection of 366 piano pieces, providing a musical selection for every day of the year, including February 29.
It was a remarkable undertaking, even for someone accustomed to composing at a seemingly astonishing pace.
The collection reflects her affection for short musical forms and her belief that worthwhile music need not always be grand or monumental.
A miniature could suggest an emotion, portray a character, or capture a passing mood without requiring the expansive architecture of a sonata.
There is something almost irresistible about the concept. Rather than waiting for a special occasion to encounter a composer's work, a pianist could open the calendar and discover a new little musical experience every day.
For performers interested in overlooked American piano repertoire, the collection represents a particularly intriguing avenue for exploration. Its enormous scale also illustrates the challenge facing anyone attempting to assess Mana-Zucca's achievement: there is simply so much music.
And My Musical Calendar accounts for only a portion of what she wrote.
Marriage, Miami, and a New Musical Kingdom
In 1921, Mana-Zucca married businessman Irwin M. Cassel, beginning a partnership that would last nearly fifty years.
The couple eventually established their home in Miami, where Cassel had business interests. Their only child, Marwin, was born in 1925.
Marriage and motherhood did not bring Mana-Zucca's musical activities to an end. Instead, they helped launch another remarkable chapter.
The couple created a residence known as Mazica Hall, a home that became one of the most celebrated musical gathering places in Miami.
Its centerpiece was an enormous living room, reportedly eighty feet long, with space to accommodate audiences of roughly three hundred people.
This was no ordinary Florida residence.
Imagine attending an intimate concert in someone's living room and discovering that the featured performers might include violinists Mischa Elman or Efrem Zimbalist, pianist José Iturbi, or another internationally recognized artist.
Such evenings were part of the musical culture Mana-Zucca cultivated.
Through the Mana-Zucca Music Club and its regular concerts, Mazica Hall became a gathering place for established musicians, promising young performers, students, and local music enthusiasts.
More than five hundred concerts were reportedly presented there over the years.
For generations of Miami musicians, the house provided opportunities that might otherwise have been unavailable. Young performers could appear before appreciative audiences, while established artists found a welcoming musical home.
Mana-Zucca was not simply promoting her own career. She was helping develop the cultural life of a growing American city.
There was, naturally, a personal advantage as well. By creating a concert series in her own home, she ensured that music remained central to her daily life.
And she never had to travel very far to attend a recital.
The Unexpected Story Behind "I Love Life"
Although her instrumental works were often her most ambitious compositions, Mana-Zucca's greatest popular success came from a song.
Its origins were characteristically domestic.
According to an anecdote she later recounted, her husband encouraged her to compose something brighter and more accessible. She responded by writing instrumental music, but Irwin apparently had something lighter in mind.
Finally, she proposed a collaboration: he would write the words, and she would provide the melody.
The result was I Love Life.
Mana-Zucca claimed that she wrote the music in approximately thirty minutes.
Even more remarkably, the song that would become her signature success was initially rejected by her publisher.
Once it reached the public, however, I Love Life found an enthusiastic audience. The celebrated baritone John Charles Thomas helped establish its popularity, and singers including Nelson Eddy and Lawrence Tibbett subsequently performed it. Paul Anka would record the song decades later.
The song's buoyant message seemed to capture the composer's own personality.
One of Mana-Zucca's favorite anecdotes involved an airplane approaching Denver that developed engine trouble. When the passengers learned of the danger, one frightened traveler reportedly began singing the hymn "Nearer, My God, to Thee."
Another passenger preferred a more optimistic selection and began singing I Love Life.
The aircraft landed safely, and a friend who had witnessed the incident telephoned Mana-Zucca to tell her what had happened.
It is difficult to imagine a more fitting story for a composer who placed such importance on optimism.
Yet the success of the song also created a frustration familiar to many composers: the public remembered the hit while overlooking the rest of her music.
Mana-Zucca sometimes compared her predicament to that of Rachmaninoff, whose famous C-sharp-minor Prelude threatened to overshadow his other achievements.
She appreciated the popularity of I Love Life, but she wanted audiences to understand that she had written much more than one cheerful melody.
Her piano works, chamber compositions, and concertos represented decades of serious artistic effort, and she hoped they would eventually receive the recognition they deserved.
Two Hundred Tiny Pianos and a House Full of Memories
Mana-Zucca's affection for the piano extended well beyond the instruments she performed upon.
Over the years, she assembled an extraordinary collection of more than two hundred miniature pianos.
Some were beautifully crafted porcelain or wooden objects, while others were elaborate reproductions of historical instruments. Her collection included delicate European miniatures, decorative curiosities, and unusual handmade examples.
One especially sentimental piece was a small wooden piano made by her son Marwin when he was a child.
The collection surrounded her in her later Miami Beach home, along with photographs, tapestries, lamps, musical memorabilia, and reminders of the many famous personalities she had encountered.
And, of course, there were two full-sized concert grand pianos: a Steinway and a Baldwin.
Visitors could hardly mistake the identity of the homeowner.
The miniature pianos also seem an appropriate symbol of Mana-Zucca's personality. Here was a woman capable of composing monumental concert works who could also take immense pleasure in the smallest representation of the instrument she loved.
To her, music was not something confined to formal performances. It was woven into the furnishings, conversations, friendships, and daily experiences of her life.
Cheerfulness as a Way of Life
Mana-Zucca possessed a remarkably optimistic outlook, and she was seldom shy about expressing it.
"Joy is the keynote of my existence," she once declared.
She preferred cheerful companions, disliked gloomy dispositions, and believed happiness was something that could be cultivated and shared.
This philosophy found its way into much of her music.
Her compositions are frequently characterized by lively rhythms, ingratiating melodies, and moments of unexpected wit. Pieces such as Polka Comique, Op. 275, and Badinage, Op. 288, show a composer who retained her sense of fun throughout her life.
But describing Mana-Zucca simply as a cheerful composer would be misleading.
Works such as Resignation, Memories, and Nostalgia reveal a more reflective personality, capable of melancholy, yearning, and considerable emotional depth.
Her music was not uniformly sunny. Rather, she seemed to possess an unusually broad emotional vocabulary, moving comfortably between humor, tenderness, drama, and introspection.
And she continued composing well into old age.
Badinage, written in 1976 when she was ninety, is particularly remarkable for its vitality. The piece suggests that the lively little girl who once complained about her toy piano had never entirely disappeared.
Nearly nine decades later, the impulse to make music remained irresistible.
A Musical Entrepreneur Ahead of Her Time
Mana-Zucca's career was not without financial and professional challenges.
The devastating Miami hurricane of 1926 and the economic upheaval of the Great Depression affected her family's business interests. Like many musicians of her generation, she found it necessary to adapt.
She taught piano, worked with singers, and eventually developed her own music-publishing activities.
Some of her earlier compositions had appeared through established publishers, including G. Schirmer and the John Church Company. But publishing her own music gave her greater control over its distribution and allowed her to continue bringing new compositions to audiences.
She also recorded performances, including piano rolls for reproducing-piano systems such as Ampico. These recordings preserved aspects of her artistry at a time when modern sound recording was still developing.
Her ability to move between concert performance, theatrical entertainment, composition, teaching, publishing, and musical organization made her an unusually versatile figure.
She was not merely a composer waiting for someone else to discover her music. She actively worked to place it before the public.
In that respect, Mana-Zucca anticipated the independent musician of the modern era: someone who creates the work, finds the audience, organizes the performances, and helps manage the business of getting music heard.
Recognition, Loss, and the Final Years
The later decades of Mana-Zucca's life brought both recognition and personal loss.
Her husband Irwin died in 1971, ending a marriage that had provided nearly half a century of companionship and artistic collaboration.
By then, the celebrated concert era of Mazica Hall had already passed. The property was eventually sold and demolished, bringing a physical end to one of Miami's most remarkable musical landmarks.
But Mana-Zucca continued to compose, teach, and participate in musical life.
In May 1974, the University of Miami awarded her an honorary Doctor of Music degree, recognizing her extraordinary contributions to composition, performance, and the region's cultural development.
Even in her nineties, she remained a colorful and engaging personality. Interviewers frequently encountered a woman who was reluctant to discuss her age but delighted to recount stories involving legendary musicians, famous entertainers, and the adventures of her youth.
She also retained a strong sense of the value of her own compositions.
During her later years, she expressed the belief that some of her finest works remained insufficiently appreciated, particularly her more serious instrumental music. She suspected that future generations might eventually discover compositions that had attracted relatively little attention during her lifetime.
It was a surprisingly perceptive observation.
Mana-Zucca died in Miami Beach on March 8, 1981, at the age of ninety-five.
With her passing, American music lost not merely a prolific composer but a living connection to an extraordinary period of musical history. Her career had stretched from the late nineteenth-century virtuoso tradition through the golden age of operetta, the rise of American popular song, and much of the modern classical era.
Few musicians could claim such a varied professional life.
Rediscovering Mana-Zucca's Piano Music
For many years after her death, Mana-Zucca's music remained largely unfamiliar to contemporary performers.
Her extraordinary productivity may even have contributed to the problem. With so many compositions scattered among published editions, manuscripts, and private collections, developing a clear picture of her achievement was no simple task.
Fortunately, a substantial portion of her musical legacy has survived.
The Mana-Zucca Collection at Florida International University preserves handwritten and published scores, orchestral materials, recordings, photographs, diaries, and extensive scrapbooks documenting her remarkable career.
The collection provides scholars and performers with a valuable opportunity to examine a body of American music that has received far less attention than its historical significance might suggest.
An important contribution to her modern rediscovery came in 2015, when pianist Nanette Kaplan Solomon released Badinage: Piano Music of Mana-Zucca on Albany Records.
The recording presented seventeen of her solo piano works, revealing the remarkable variety of her musical language. The selections ranged from early virtuoso pieces and lyrical character studies to substantial sonatas and compositions from her final years.
For listeners unfamiliar with Mana-Zucca, the recording offered a revelation: this was not simply the composer of a once-popular song, but a thoroughly trained pianist-composer with a sophisticated understanding of harmony, texture, and instrumental technique.
Her music also offers an appealing alternative perspective on twentieth-century American composition.
While many of her contemporaries explored modernism, experimentation, and increasingly complex musical languages, Mana-Zucca remained deeply attached to melody, tonal beauty, and direct communication.
Her music was not generally revolutionary in its harmonic vocabulary, although some later works became more adventurous. Its appeal lay instead in craftsmanship, imagination, personality, and the pleasure of making the piano sing.
Today, works such as Valse Brillante, Prelude, Poème, Wistaria, Bolero de Concert, and Badinage offer pianists a fascinating repertoire that deserves wider exploration.
They are also a reminder that the history of American piano music contains far more than the familiar names appearing on standard recital programs.
The Woman Who Never Stopped Loving Music
Mana-Zucca's life reads almost like a novel.
She began as a precocious child who refused to accept a toy piano without proper black keys. She studied with some of Europe's greatest pianists, charmed audiences on two continents, appeared on the musical stage, composed hundreds upon hundreds of works, and transformed her Miami home into a thriving center of musical activity.
She befriended famous performers, surrounded herself with miniature pianos, and maintained a sense of humor that survived well into her nineties.
Yet behind the remarkable personality stood a genuinely accomplished musician.
Her piano compositions reveal a composer who understood the instrument from the inside: its technical possibilities, its expressive range, its capacity for humor, and its extraordinary ability to communicate emotion.
She could write a dazzling concert piece, a tender miniature, an expansive sonata, or a playful dance. Sometimes she seemed interested in impressing the listener; at other times, she simply wanted to make someone smile.
And perhaps that is the most attractive quality of her music.
Mana-Zucca never appeared to believe that artistic seriousness required the abandonment of pleasure. She could admire the great European masters while also appreciating the charm of a popular melody. She could compose ambitious instrumental works without losing her affection for the little character pieces that brought enjoyment to everyday pianists.
Her career reminds us that musical history is filled with fascinating figures who were once admired, celebrated, and widely performed, only to fade from public memory as tastes and fashions changed.
Fortunately, forgotten does not mean lost.
More than a century after she first appeared before concert audiences, Mana-Zucca's piano music remains ready to surprise and delight anyone willing to explore it.
And somewhere in the lively rhythms, lush harmonies, and unexpected flourishes, one can almost hear that determined three-year-old girl demanding a proper F-sharp.
After all, a piano ought to have every note a composer might need.
Selected Performances
Prelude, Op. 73 - Composed in 1923, this miniature is one of Mana-Zucca’s most enduring works, a perfect distillation of her lush harmonic language and effortless lyricism.
At first glance, Prelude, Op. 73 seems modest: just a few pages, marked by a flowing melody that sighs over warm, chromatic harmonies. But listen more closely, and you’ll hear the fingerprints of a composer who knew her way around both the opera stage and the salon. The opening phrase sounds almost like a lost Rachmaninoff theme drifting through a smoky Miami night (she lived much of her life there), while the middle section breaks into an impassioned surge — the pianist’s right hand climbing ever higher as if chasing the horizon. Then, as quickly as it flared up, it melts away again, returning to its original hush with a wistful smile.
Fugato Humoresque on the Theme of Dixie - Only Mana-Zucca could turn a Civil War–era tune into a dazzling piano showpiece that winks as much as it impresses. Her Fugato Humoresque on the Theme of “Dixie,” composed in 1917, takes the familiar Southern anthem and whirls it through a whirlwind of classical counterpoint and ragtime flair.
In true Mana-Zucca fashion, it’s part homage, part mischief. She treats Dixie like Bach might have — tossing its jaunty melody between the hands in clever imitation — but then adds syncopations, key changes, and flourishes that remind you this is pure 20th-century Americana. The result is a kind of musical sleight-of-hand: scholarly on the surface, but full of humor and theatrical sparkle underneath.
A Portrait of Mana-Zucca- Here is fun video biography of Mana-Zucca with interviews and archival footage.
Locating The Music
Piano Rare Scores has a fabulous package of rare Mana-Zucca scores. There is also free public domain scores available at Sheet Music International. The Julliard Store has a bundle of four piano works. And finally, IMSLP has some additional free piano scores.
Compositions for Piano
Early Works (Pre-1910s)
Moment Musicale for Violin and Piano – Composed at age 7; her first published work.
Etude de Concert – Composed at age 8.
Frage – Her first art song, published by Schirmer.
Moment Triste & Moment Orientale – Composed at age 9; published by Schirmer.
1910s–1930s: Early Career & Pedagogical Works
Valse Brillante, Op. 20 – Published by G. Schirmer in 1916.
Fugato-Humoresque on the Theme of “Dixie”, Op. 21 – Published around 1917.
The Christmas Tree – Published by Congress Music Publications
Columbus Circle – Listed as a manuscript.
Interlude, Op. 184, No. 6 – Included in the "4 Piano Works" collection.
Etude d'hommage, Op. 26 – Included in the "4 Piano Works" collection.
Prelude, Op. 73 – Published in 1923
1940s–1960s: Mature Compositions
My Musical Calendar – A collection of 366 short piano pieces.
Sonata No. 1, Op. 217 – Composed in 1951.
Sonata No. 2, Op. 280 – Composed in 1968.
Badinage, Op. 288 – Composed in 1976.
1970s–1980s: Later Works
Wistaria, Op. 38 No. 1 – exact composition year unknown
The Zouaves' Drill, Op. 68 – exact composition year unknown.
Southland Zephyrs, Op. 72 No. 1 – exact composition year unknown.
Bolero de Concert, Op. 72 No. 2 – exact composition year unknown.
Poème, Op. 37 – exact composition year unknown.
Resignation, Op. 183 No. 9 – exact composition year unknown.
Memories, Op. 186 No. 28 – exact composition year unknown.
Nostalgia, Op. 187 No. 30 – exact composition year unknown.
Scherzando, Op. 266 – exact composition year unknown.
La Poverina, Op. 272 – exact composition year unknown.
Polka Comique, Op. 275 – exact composition year unknown.
Moment Espagnol, Op. 293 – exact composition year unknown.
