Top of page
Posted by: Pat Padua
The following is a guest post by Judy Graves, Digital Project Coordinator, Digital Reference Section and life-long Girl Scout. On Saturday, June 9th, the Girl Scouts of the Nation’s Capitol will host a song fest on the National Mall. With 200,000 girls and adults expected, this will not be an ordinary songfest by any stretch …
Posted in: Guest bloggers, Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Cait Miller
The following is a guest post from Music Cataloger Laura Yust. Scottish composer Thea Musgrave was born in Barnton, Midlothian, near Edinburgh, Scotland on 27 May 1928. Still a busy composer as she celebrates her 84th birthday, Musgrave has written operas, concertos, chamber music, solo vocal and choral music, solo instrumental music, and electro-acoustic music. …
Posted in: Birthdays, Composers, Guest bloggers, Women in Music
Posted by: Pat Padua
The following is a guest post by Senior Cataloger Sharon McKinley. This is already last week’s news, but we wanted to note the passing of a singer who had a profound and lasting effect on legions of performers and a horde of admirers through a large part of the 20th century and beyond. How does …
Posted in: Guest bloggers, Musicians
Posted by: Pat Padua
The 2011 National Recording Registry selections were announced this morning, and as always the titles are great fodder for an eclectic, historically important, culturally influential mix-tape. Among the titles is one of my very favorite albums, Love’s Forever Changes, a relic of 1967 whose lush string arrangements, rich melodies, and alternately pastoral and visionary lyrics make …
Posted in: Musicians, Special Collections
Posted by: Cait Miller
The following is a guest post from Senior Music Cataloger Sharon McKinley. You may have read last week’s post about identifying the elusive Telemaque. This little story had a happy ending: music library colleagues at Harvard were able to identify the piece and its composer for me. What joy! Better yet, their library staff was …
Posted in: Guest bloggers
Posted by: Pat Padua
The following is a guest post by Sharon McKinley, Senior Music Cataloger. Old sheet music can be brittle. The pages are often dissected and bound into volumes by previous owners. Sometimes a piece is simply missing pages. With all that, do you ever wonder how Library of Congress catalogers can identify a piece? I did …
Posted in: Newly Cataloged, Special Collections
Posted by: Cait Miller
Tonight President Obama will award the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song to the songwriting duo of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and last night the Library of Congress hosted a special invitation-only tribute concert to Bacharach and David in the Library’s historic Coolidge Auditorium. I was lucky enough to get a seat …
Posted in: Composers, Concerts and Events
Posted by: Pat Padua
As seen from the Earth, the planet Venus will move across the face of the sun on June 5, 2012. This week’s featured sheet music celebrates this rare orbit with John Philip Sousa’s commemorative march, part of a Transit of Venus presentation created in the Performing Arts Encyclopedia with the help of NASA scientist Sten …
Posted in: Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
When I prepared the Martha Graham Collection for digitization some years ago, I looked at hundreds of clippings that the legendary choreography kept in her detailed scrapbooks. Something struck me about the dance reviews. Regular columns by certain music critics were accompanied by a thumbnail photo of the author. In the scrapbook pages of the Graham …
Posted in: Pic of the Week, Special Collections