Krasinsky, "Ouverture et airs du ballet de Telemaque." Paris? between 1790 and 1820?

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 too.

Recently I had occasion to deal with a mystery score entitled Telemaque.  Hmm, no composer.  Looks like we’re missing the title page.  There are a bunch of Telemaques and his relatives (such as Telemaco) in the Library of Congress catalog.  Cool, I can run downstairs and look….oops, nope.  Seems a lot of people wrote works about this character (he stars in the Odyssey), among them Gluck, Scarlatti, and Campra.  Mine is not among them.

More research ensues.  Hmm, here are two publications of a nice ballet in WorldCat.org with a title that looks hopeful: Ouverture et airs du ballet de Telemaque.  My item starts with”Ouverture de Telemaque.”  Could it be? How to identify it further…ah, there are two editions at Harvard.  Can I get away with taking a research junket to Cambridge?  Not likely. Next best thing:  Music Library Association colleagues.  I email a photograph (no flash!) of the first page to Beth Iseminger, Music and Media Catalog Librarian at the Loeb Music Library.  She sends it on to Andrea Cawelti, Ward Music Cataloger at Harvard’s Houghton Library, who compares my publication to her two, and Eureka!  An orphan has been identified.  The work is “Télémaque dans l’ile de Calypso,” by a fellow named Krasinsky.  We can’t be sure which edition it is, since only the missing title page differentiates the two.  But now we know what it is, and it’s proudly cataloged under the correct composer.  Professional contacts and the wonders of technology have solved a problem that would have been daunting not so very long ago.  And…now you know how it’s done.

Burt Bacharach, 2012 Fourth Gershwin Prize Recipient

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 last night, and was thrilled to hear the musical stylings of 2009 Gershwin Prize recipient Stevie Wonder, Dionne Warwick, Diana Krall, Arturo Sandoval, Sheryl Crow, Lyle Lovett, Michael Feinstein, Mike Myers, Rumer, and Shelea. It was a wonderful opportunity to hear these artists bring their own style to classics such as “Alfie,” “Make It Easy on Yourself,” “The Look of Love” and more Bacharach/David hits; the concert certainly made clear the influence these two men have had on countless musicians across multiple genres and generations.

Hal David, 2012 Fourth Gershwin Prize Recipient

Tonight many of these musicians will also pay tribute to Bacharach and David in a musical performance at the White House – and you can see it for yourselves! Tonight the concert will be streaming live on The White House’s live streams at 7:00 pm ET. If you can’t watch the live stream, never fear – PBS will be airing the concert on Monday, May 21, 2012 (check your local listings).

"Transit of Venus" by John Philip Sousa. Philadelphia: J.W. Pepper, 1896.

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 Odenwald.

Next week Odenwald will be at the Library to discuss “A Rare Astronomical Event: Transit of Venus” at 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday, May 8, in the Mary Pickford Theater on the third floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. The event is free and open to the public.  No tickets are necessary.  The illustrated lecture is presented through a collaboration between the Library’s Science, Technology and Business Division and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Read the Library’s press release for more information.

New York Post dance critic Harriet Johnson, in a detail from her May 11, 1946 review of "Serpent Heart."

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 collection, one face that regularly appears is that of Harriett Johnson.

Johnson was the music critic for the New York Post for 43 years, as well as a sometime composer. Her New York Times obituary fondly makes note of her 1954 work, ”Chuggy and the Blue Caboose.”  The Music Division has in its collections Johnson’s  1977 work “Pet of the Met,” scored for soprano, baritone, and orchestra.  Johnson died in 1987 at the age of 79.

"In the shadows." Music by Herman Finck, lyrics by E. Ray Goetz. New York: Jos. W. Stern & Co., 1911.

Fans of the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows were saddened by the death last week of star Jonathan Frid, who played the vampire Barnabas Collins.  This week’s featured sheet music does not speak of vampires or other shadowy figures. But its lyrical plea to “meet me in the shadows” is at once romantic and sinister, and the cover illustration of the spectral dancers awaiting you in the dark might encourage you to sit out this dance. For those in search of vampires, In the Muse does have plenty to offer.

Photo by Pat Padua

The following is a guest post by Ruth Bright, an intern working in Music Cataloging. Thanks to Sharon McKinley, Senior Music Cataloger, for conducting the interview.

What made you want to apply for an internship at the Library of Congress?

As a member of the Renaissance Scholars Honors Program at Montgomery College, I was encouraged to apply to be an intern at the Library of Congress through the Paul Peck Humanities Institute. I have always been an avid reader, and the opportunity to work with the music collection was a dream come true for someone who is majoring in music.

What’s an item or collection that makes you want to say, “Hey, look at THIS!”

In the latter part of my internship, I am spending some time making bibliographic records for a collection of volumes of American songs bound together by different private individuals, from the early to mid 1800s. The time period of these songs makes them an important deposit of early American songwriting, and as a collection, these 290 volumes are a valuable treasure of the Library.

What Library concerts or lectures did you especially enjoy?

Throughout my stay at the Library, I’ve managed to attend one lecture or another almost every day I’m here.  The subjects ranged from Schoenberg’s composing process to Louis Armstrong as a melodist, from the political culture of the Parisian café to the present influence of Ralph Ellison on modern authors, and from Safavid Iran to the Great Experiment of the Soviet Union.  These are just a fraction of the diverse presentations I have been privileged to hear. They reflect the depth of the holdings of the Library of Congress as well as the range of librarians and scholars that work with and use the collections.

What are your future plans?

While finishing my studies at Montgomery College majoring in music, I have been accepted into the School of Music at the University of Maryland. I am excited at the prospect of continuing my study of piano performance there in the fall. My long term goals include teaching piano and accompanying, with a special place in my heart for musical theater.  I wish to pursue graduate degrees in those areas.

What musical interests do you pursue outside the Library?

I am an accompanist at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gaithersburg, and also teach and accompany privately.  Always looking for opportunities to collaborate with other artists to make music and entertain an audience.  I especially enjoy performing chamber music.   In addition to piano, I also study violin, and enjoy playing with the Montgomery College Metropolitan Orchestra.  An avid concert-goer, I love to hear good music performed live.

What’s something else you would like us to know about you?

I also write poetry, and would like to share a poem I wrote about books and the written word.

The Library

Their faces peering out at me,

Intent, some distant, silently,

Some handsome bold, some haggard old,

But all so gaze eternally.

And rows on rows, unnumbered souls,

With each a story, given roles,

Are acted out, without a doubt

As foreordained, achieving goals.

The beautiful and young stand still

As those without a spirit will.

The elderly, immobile see

As captured, single scenes fulfill.

The artists painted, masters said

Creating life as gods, and sped

Their beings breath, not granting death,

Immortalized, their words are read.

"Cherry blossom time in Washington." Lyric and music by Irma Von Lackey. Washington, D.C.: Irma Von Lackey, 1926.

The following is a guest post by Sharon McKinley, Senior Music Cataloger.

The blossoms themselves have been gone for weeks already; it was one of the earliest seasons ever. But the Centennial of the National Cherry Blossom Festival is still going strong, all the way through April 27, and we thought we’d help keep the festivities vibrant by sharing this wonderful little song published right here in the neighborhood.

“Cherry blossom time in Washington” was penned by Irma von Lackey and submitted for copyright in 1926. The song is a cute little self-published ditty in a typical late 20s style. Note the lovely cover picture of the Tidal Basin ringed with gloriously blooming trees, with the Washington Monument piercing the sky for extra effect.

We have plenty of cherry blossom works in our collections, from various time periods and in a variety of styles. A few of the musical examples make fun of the Japanese or are sung in offensive dialect, but most are unabashed love songs. How could the girl of your dreams not react to the invocation of fragrant blossoms in romantic settings?! You can check out cherry-themed music, sound recordings, visual materials and much more right here on our site; see the resource list below.

For me, this post turned into more than just a quest for cherry blossom songs. I enjoy finding anecdotal information about obscure composers, and Irma von Lackey led me on a merry chase (this was MUCH more important than having lunch!). According to the copyright registrations for two items she published, she lived variously in Washington DC and Arlington, VA. And that’s all we know about her. I spent that lunchtime tracking her down via the US Census. The just-released Census of 1940 was key in identifying her residence with her sister and brother-in-law. She’d moved from a boarding house filled with single female US Government employees in the 1920 census, to a more diverse residential hotel in the 1930 census…to live with family by 1940. Keep going back, and you get to her father, a composer and music teacher in Ohio. Which might explain in part why she was writing music in Washington in 1926. Somewhere out there is the Allen family, who may or may not remember Aunt Irma Lackey from the 1940s and beyond. In the meantime, she’s left us with a song to enjoy.

Library of Congress resources:

Shows from the  database,  It’s Showtime! Sheet Music from Stage and Screen!

• Cherry blossom, 1926
• Cherry blossoms, 1927
• Miss Cherryblossom, 1914

Individual songs:

• “When the cherry blossoms fall : love is love“; from The royal vagabond, 1919
• “In cherry blossom time with you“, from Broadway brevities, 1920
• “My Japanese cherry blossom,” from Hoity toity, 1901
• “When it’s cherry blossom time in Siberia,” from Gloriana, 1913

More:

• “Cherry blossom = Sakura, sakura” (a piece for cello)
• “Cherry blossom time in Japan ” (sound recording)
• A cherry blossom map of Washington D.C., 1937
• The cherry blossom corpse, by Robert Bernard. New York : Scribner, 1987 (a mystery set in London)

Digitized items:

• Blooming Cherry Blossoms, Falling Cherry Blossoms: Symbolism of the Flower in Japanese Culture and History (webcast lecture)
• “Cherry blossom time,”  a political cartoon by Clifford Kennedy Berryman.
• “Cherry blossoms in Potomac Park, Washington, D.C. around Tidal Basin,” a photograph from 1919

And from the National Jukebox:

Sister Gregory Duffy backstage at Rosary College's theater, taken by Warncke's Studio, 1972. Dominican University, Archives and Special Collections.

Sister Gregory (1912-1995) was a Dominican nun and theater professor at Rosary College in Illinois (now Dominican University). Every summer Sr. Gregory would travel to New York City to go to the theater and she developed personal relationships with several famous actors, including Mary Martin with whom she connected after seeing South Pacific in 1949. A decade later, when Rodgers and Hammerstein teamed up with writers Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, as well as Mary Martin and producer Richard Halliday (also Martin’s husband) for a new project about the Trapp Family Singers, Sr. Gregory was contacted to provide an inside perspective on religious life for the musical’s convent scenes.

Sister Gregory Duffy and Mary Martin, 1977. Dominican University, Archives and Special Collections.

Numerous sources have identified Sr. Gregory as a technical advisor to the creators of The Sound of Music, though many of them mention her only in passing. Her correspondence begins in early 1958 after she’s first contacted by Halliday and Martin about a project based on the Trapp story. She’s enthusiastic from the very mention of it and immediately begins offering an inside perspective on what draws women to the religious life, the numerous opportunities postulants and novices have to evaluate their decision to enter the convent, and what motivates the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. She even delves into the philosophical heart of the Trapp story when she writes, “The whole purpose of life, it seems to me, is pin-pointed in Maria’s struggle to choose between two vocations. Like every adult human being, she must find the answer to the question: ‘What does God want me to do with my life? How does He wish me to spend my love?’” This question apparently had an impact on the creative team, as Sr. Gregory’s phrasing is incorporated into Scene 13 of the published script when Maria returns to the abbey after her feelings for Captain Von Trapp complicate her life plans. Mother Abbess comforts Maria and assures her that, “…you have a great capacity to love. What you must find out is – how does God want you to spend your love?”

Sr. Gregory drew this for Hammerstein and mailed it to him on September 25, 1959 just after his surgery. Hammerstein Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress.

There are about 15 pieces of correspondence from Sr. Gregory in the Hammerstein Collection spanning from early 1958 to late 1959. The letters are mostly addressed to Richard Halliday and Mary Martin and were then forwarded to Hammerstein; however, in late 1959 Sr. Gregory started addressing Hammerstein directly, eventually offering him spiritual guidance as he faced stomach cancer. The better part of Sr. Gregory’s correspondence, however, critiques the first draft of the script for the musical where reflections of Catholic traditions and interactions of the religious could be made more authentic. A copy of Halliday’s typed notes from a phone conversation with Sr. Gregory on August 4, 1959 marks a change in her critique though – nowhere in the conversation is religious life even discussed; instead, Sr. Gregory expresses concern over the portrayal of Captain Von Trapp. In her own words, “As the script is now, the Captain is cold… The only scene where I think he is even likeable is the last scene – after they’re married. It’s unbelievable that anyone could change so quickly…As a woman, I’d much rather get my hands on Max!” Here is where the professor of drama emerges, and she cannot help but step outside the role of technical advisor of Catholic matters and assert her critique of character development.

There is a break in the correspondence until September 1959, when Rodgers and Hammerstein’s new music is mailed to Sr. Gregory (two months before opening night). She reports that, upon receiving the music, she immediately gathered around a piano with eight other nuns to sing through all of the songs. She effuses over the music and comments, “After a few practice rounds, that ALLELUIA really orbited and soared all over the place…Without question, your professionals will do a better job on the music, but I assure you they will not have nearly as much fun.” Most poignant is Sr. Gregory’s reaction to hearing “Climb Every Mountain” for the first time. She writes, “It’s a beautiful song and drove me to the Chapel…It made me acutely aware of how tremendously fortunate are those who find the dream that will absorb all their love, and finding it, embrace it to the end…So I just had to dash into Chapel, give Him a quick but heart-felt ‘thank you’ and ask that all the youngsters I love so devotedly not only find their dreams but also have the courage to follow them – wherever they lead.”

Now, in all my years watching the 1965 film, I never really came to love “Climb Every Mountain” – I suppose I always found it a little too cheesy with reaching for your dreams, following rainbows, and championing mountains all crammed into one song. However, in reading Sr. Gregory’s thoughts on the universal struggle to find one’s purpose in life, and in witnessing how her early observations and thoughts later fed into Hammerstein’s lyrical development of the song, I all of sudden find the music genuinely moving. The lyrics evolve from an inner dialogue that most every individual navigates at some point or another when considering how we fit into this remarkable universe. Life is about determining our great passion and giving 100% to that passion. It’s a simple concept, but one that resonates with any individual, no matter which rainbow you follow.

American Folklife Center AFC 1941/002: Library of Congress/Fisk University Mississippi Delta Collection. Photo by Alan Lomax.

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 was well documented in published accounts by both men, neither of them mentioned Honeyboy being filmed. On a typescript sheet of paper accompanying the films from his 1942 field trip, Lomax or an assistant identified the performer as “Charles Edwards,” a mistake that led to it remaining obscure for seventy years. But AFC staff members noticed that the musician on the film looked like a young Honeyboy, and also identified strong similarities to Lomax’s description of the young bluesman, from his rakish hat to his thumb pick.

Eventually, their suspicions were strong enough that they sent screen captures like this one to Honeyboy’s manager, Michael Frank, who showed the shots to Honeyboy’s stepdaughter, born in 1940. Her verdict: “That’s my Daddy!”

We think AFC’s film is the first known image of Honeyboy of any kind; we haven’t found any other photos earlier than 1967, twenty-five years after the film was shot.

Honeyboy Edwards was one of the greatest blues artists of all time, having won a place in the Blues Hall of Fame (1996), a National Heritage Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts (2002), an Acoustic Artist of the Year award from the W.C. Handy Blues Awards (2005), an Acoustic Artist of the Year award from The Blues Music Awards (2007), a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Blues Album (2008), and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2010). He passed away in 2011.

AFC’s archive was founded as the Archive of American Folk Song in 1928, and was part of the Library’s Music Division for almost fifty years.  Shortly after the creation of the American Folklife Center by Congress in 1976, the Archive, including this small but important piece of motion picture film, was moved to AFC. The beautiful state of the film is a testament to the Music Division’s archivists, who took care of it for over thirty-five years, as well to those of AFC.

To learn about other items from the American Folklife Center, please “like” AFC’s Facebook page.

"Titanic: In the Shadows of the Deep" by Wm. Held and John Boland, published by Chas. H. Henderson Music Pub. Co. c. 1912. Music Division, Library of Congress.

One hundred years ago, on April 14, 1912, the luxury steamship Titanic struck an iceberg and sank within just a few hours. Over 3,000 passengers and crew members were on board, and just over half of them died. It was one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history, made all the more dramatic because the Titanic was supposedly designed and constructed to be unsinkable. News about the disaster spread rapidly; people were deeply affected by the tragedy, and many responded by writing songs. Some of the piano-vocal sheet music composed to commemorate the sinking of the Titanic has been collected in the Music Division and is cataloged under the subject heading “Titanic (Steamship)—Songs and music” (call number: M1978 .T55). Many of the songs in this collection recognize and praise the musicians who stayed on the ship and continued to play in an effort to calm and reassure the passengers as they attempted to board lifeboats. Legend has it that the musicians played until the very last moment of their lives when they slipped into the icy water. There was some question about what music they played, but several survivors reported hearing the hymn, “Nearer, my God, to Thee”. Several of the more colorful and descriptive sheet music covers can be seen here in the Performing Arts Encyclopedia. The majority of the songs about the Titanic were published in 1912 and 1913. Interestingly, much of the music seems incongruously lighthearted, as it reflected popular music styles of the time. Some of it was written by notorious ‘song sharks’ who were not overly concerned with quality. The pieces in this collection range from a heartfelt amateur effort by someone who struggled to notate his or her musical ideas, to songs by M.C. Hanford, who wrote at least 22 songs to lyrics about the Titanic, all for the H. Kirkus Dugdale music publishing company. Apparently the company was a ‘song-poem’ factory located at 14^th and ‘U’ Streets, N.W. right here in Washington, DC. Included in the collection is a postcard with the melody and lyrics of a song about the Titanic and an advertisement soliciting more lyrics for the Needham Music House, likely another song shark operation.

"When the Titanic went down" by M.C. Hanford and Kittie D.G. Rogers, published by H. Kirkus Dugdale Co. c. 1912. Music Division, Library of Congress.

The subject of the Titanic has continued to interest people over the past century. English composer Gavin Bryars conceived of the idea for his composition The Sinking of the Titanic in 1969 as the musical equivalent of a conceptual work of art. He was intrigued with the idea of the musicians playing on deck while the ship sank and tried to create the sound, as he imagined it, of music being played underwater. The sound recording of this work is available in the Motion Picture, Broadcasting & Record Sound Division.

If you visit the Music Division to explore the sheet music about the wreck of the Titanic, you might want to wander down to the nearby waterfront at 4^th and P Streets, S.W. to visit the Washington Titanic Memorial, constructed in memory of the men who perished in the event so that women and children could survive.