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Posted by: Nicholas A. Brown-Cáceres
The Library of Congress, including the Performing Arts Reading Room, will close at 12:00pm on Friday, January 22, 2016 due to inclement weather. We will remain closed through Saturday, January 23, 2016. Our digital resources are available for use throughout the closures. Please watch our facebook page for an operating status update for Monday, January …
Posted in: Concerts and Events, Pic of the Week, Sheet Music, Staff
Posted by: Pat Padua
With the help of Elizabeth Fulford Miller, who provided web metrics, In the Muse looks back at the past year to see our most popular blog posts. 11. 1750: Berlin on the Potomac. A look at Berlin chamber music under Frederick the Great, the subject of a program in our Spring 2012 lecture series. 10. Our …
Posted in: Dance, Film Music, Jazz, Pic of the Week, Sheet Music, Special Collections, Staff
Posted by: Cait Miller
Tomorrow, August 25, marks American composer, conductor, and educator Leonard Bernstein’s birthday (he would be 94 years old!). Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) was without a doubt one of the most significant and influential musical figures in American history. The Music Division is incredibly fortunate to hold the Leonard Bernstein Collection. One of the most heavily used …
Posted in: Birthdays, Composers, Pic of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
The following post is by Music Cataloging intern Ruth Bright. While cataloging as an intern in the Music Division, I ran across this beautifully illustrated lithograph title page for a song tucked away inside an anonymous volume, one of approximately 290 volumes found at LC classification number M1.A15. This volume of miscellaneous melodies contains many …
Posted in: Guest bloggers, Newly Cataloged, Pic of the Week
Posted by: Pat Padua
The following is a guest post by Dance Heritage Coalition Fellow Nicole Topich. Processing the Marge Champion Collection in the Music Division has been one of the most exciting archives jobs I have held. The collection is not very large, but almost every item I found was interesting or historically significant. Because the collection has …
Posted in: Dance, Guest bloggers, Pic 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
Posted by: Pat Padua
The following is a guest post by Stephen Winick, American Folklife Center. Staff members from the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center (AFC) have identified a one-minute-long segment of silent color footage as film of David “Honeyboy” Edwards, shot by Alan Lomax for the Music Division in 1942. Although the meeting between Edwards and Lomax …
Posted in: Guest bloggers, Musicians, Pic of the Week
Posted by: Pat Padua
People sometimes ask if Library of Congress programs are available to view online. Copyright and other issues prevent us from making everything available online, but highlights from the Music Division’s great concert and lecture season are available on the Library’s webcasts page, including the lecture “Bernstein meets Broadway,” the late Jack Gottlieb’s revealing talk “Working …
Posted in: Concerts and Events, Musicians, Pic of the Week
Posted by: Pat Padua
The following is a guest post by Stephen Winick, Writer and Editor, American Folklife Center. On Saturday, February 18, 2012, the Library’s Coolidge auditorium hosted a relaxed and thoroughly enjoyable concert by Grammy-Award-winning old-time folk music group The Carolina Chocolate Drops. The two-hour concert featured old-fashioned music on guitar, banjo, steel-resonator mandolin, and fiddle, with …
Posted in: Composers, Concerts and Events, Guest bloggers, Pic of the Week