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Archive: May 2012 (9 Posts)

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Composer Profile: Thea Musgrave and the Dramatic Element

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. …

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Remembering Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, 1925-2012

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 …

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Love on the National Recording Registry

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 …

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Cataloger’s Corner: Telemaque Update!

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 …

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Cataloger’s Corner: Mystery Score Identified!

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 …

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Gershwin Prize 2012: Bacharach and David

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 …

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Pic of the Week: Critical Edition

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 …