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 …
Archive for the ‘Lectures’ Category (21 posts)
Posted in: Collections, Lectures, Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week
The following is a guest post by Daniel Walshaw, Music Division. Berlin – before the nightclubs and the heavy metal concerts, before the cabarets and the brettls, even before the Berlin Philharmonic – evening musical entertainment was centered on a vibrant and growing chamber music tradition, nurtured by King Frederick II of Prussia. C.P.E. Bach, Johann …
Posted in: Composers, Guest bloggers, Lectures
The following is a guest post from Daniel Walshaw, Music Division. Scream with uncontrollable, horrific shrieks! Schoenberg is coming to the Coolidge Auditorium! Perhaps that was a tad overly dramatic, but for those who would react in such a manner, and for those who are members of the dodecaphonic cognoscenti, the Music Division lecture this …
The Music Division is happy to announce a new webcast from our spring lecture series, featuring Senior Reference Specialist and occasional guest blogger Kevin Lavine. Set within the artistic milieu of the last decades of Imperial Russia, Tchaikovsky & Taneyev: Mentor and Protégé traces the lives and careers of two of that country’s most influential …
This week the MacArthur Foundation announced their list of this year’s Fellows, selected for ” their creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future.” Winners came from a variety of fields: clinical psychology, architecture, radio production, and poetry. Among the honored musicans is percussionist/composer Dafnis Prieto, who was a memorable part of …
Posted in: Composers, Interviews, Lectures
In her list of “not to miss” DC performances this year, The Washington Post music critic Anne Midgette included the premiere of Finnish composer Olli Kortekangas’s Seven Songs for Planet Earth, which will be performed in a concert called “Northern Lights: Choral Illuminations from Scandinavia and Beyond” by The Choral Arts Society of Washington and …
We are always excited to welcome composers to the Music Division as it not only affords us the opportunity to connect with new faces and perspectives in the music world, but also allows us the opportunity to appreciate how their activities are an extension of the legacies preserved here in the Library’s collections. This Friday, …
The following is a guest post by Music Reference Specialist Lisa Shiota. “It always makes me smile when the Library of Congress asks me to keep my sketches for their collection. When I get through I don’t have any sketches—they’re all rubbed out. I write an awful lot of notes that don’t stay.” ~Walter Piston, …
Posted in: Composers, Guest bloggers, Lectures
In the Muse has been known to make unlikely connections along the musical spectrum, from Lawrence Welk to the Velvet Underground, from Paul Williams to DJ Shadow. And if you have a second, we’ll explain how the disco-era novelty singles of Rick Dees, (the bell-bottomed Jekyll and Hyde of “Disco Duck;” “Bigfoot,” which imagines that the …
The following is a guest post by Reference Specialist Caitlin Miller, who will soon be joining me as a regular blogger for In the Muse. About every six months or so, the Music Division welcomes a new exhibit into the Performing Arts Reading Room foyer. We are currently thrilled to host an exhibit dedicated to …
Posted in: Collections, Instruments, Lectures, Web Presentations
