Top of page
By: Pat Padua
The following is a guest post by Jan Lancaster, Music Division. Works of art on paper invite contemplation. Drawings express an artist’s most immediate thoughts. They have a purity, an elegance. Every touch of the pencil, pen, or brush distills and crystallizes a moment in the artist’s thought process. Printmaking – the art of making …
Posted in: In The Muse
By: Matt Raymond
Developers for the iPhone and iPad have been able to say “there’s an app for that” about a quarter-million times–the total number currently available in Apple’s App Store. But not until now has there been an official app for the Library of Congress. (So far it’s the first and only app–don’t be fooled by imitators!) …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Pat Padua
The Music Division was saddened to hear that record producer/ recording artist/television legend Mitch Miller passed away on saturday in Manhattan. Miller lived to the venerable age of 99 years and thus bore witness to nearly a century of popular music history. As an executive at Mercury and then Columbia records, Miller played a vital …
Posted in: In The Muse
By: Pat Padua
The following is a guest post by Susan Clermont, Senior Music Specialist. “To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts – such is the duty of the artist.” Robert Schumann Beginning with the 1925-26 inaugural season of the Library of Congress’s annual Festival of Chamber Music, the music of Robert Schumann (1810-1856) has flooded …
Posted in: In The Muse
By: Larry Appelbaum
William P. Gottlieb (1917-2006) is one of the most celebrated jazz photographers. His iconic images documenting the great stylists and innovators in American jazz and popular music have been studied and reproduced for generations, and his collection of photographs is one of the Library’s great treasures. The Music Division is now pleased to announce the …
Posted in: In The Muse
By: Pat Padua
Today we remember the July birthdays of two very different musical luminaries represented in the Music Division’s august coffers. Ernest Bloch was born July 24th, 1880. A special performance of his viola suite was given on December 10th, 2009, in the Coolidge Auditorium by violist Roberto Diaz and pianist Andrew Tyson to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary …
Posted in: In The Muse
By: Pat Padua
One of the highlights for the Music Division this year was the recipient of the Gershwin Prize for Popular Music. But even the lucky few of us who attended the Gershwin Prize concert at the Coolidge Auditorium got only a glimpse of the all-star line-up who would perform at the White House. Wednesday night on …
Posted in: In The Muse
By: Pat Padua
This comes over the transom from Today in History. Legend has it that on this day in 1904, Charles E. Menches filled a pastry cone with two scoops of ice-cream and thus is responsible for the conical icon we celebrate today. The history of ideas, however sweet, is more complicated than that, as the cast of characters …
Posted in: In The Muse
By: Pat Padua
Composer Roger Reynolds was born July 18, 1934 in Detroit, Michigan. Ciro G. Scotto, in his 1992 volume Contemporary Composers, wrote that Reynolds “has created a body of work that encompasses nearly every major musical development in the 20th century.” In an article written for the Library of Congress Information Bulletin in 2002, Senior Music Specialist …
Posted in: In The Muse
By: Pat Padua
Forty-one years ago today, astronaut Neil A. Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on the moon. The Apollo 11 broadcast from the moon on July 20, 1969, which transmitted Neil Armstrong’s immortal words, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” was named to the National Recording Registry in 2004. Remember one giant …
Posted in: In The Muse