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By: Jennifer Gavin
… And despite all good cheer, It sized up as “boringest night of the year.” Still 36 hours until Christmas dawning, And reruns of reruns were leaving ‘em yawning. The tree decorating had happened last week The lineup of movies appeared rather bleak. The cookies were eaten; the sprinkles were scattered No Christmas ‘till Christmas! …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Larry Appelbaum
The discovery five years ago of the Thelonious Monk-John Coltrane 1957 Carnegie Hall concert tapes focused attention on the deep jazz collections here at the Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2005/05-090.html). The tapes, found while preserving the Voice of America Collection, were subsequently issued by Blue Note Records and became a sensation in the jazz world. Since …
Posted in: In The Muse
By: Pat Padua
When we’re not awarding honors to Knighted former Beatles, we in the Music Division are caretakers of one of the great performing arts archives in the world. It’s an embarrassment of riches, and a lifetime could be spent studying just the online collections in the Performing Arts Encyclopedia (the website formerly known as I Hear …
Posted in: In The Muse
By: Matt Raymond
There’s something very satisfying in music about the number three: three notes in a basic chord, a romantic waltz in 3/4 time, the three-movement form of early symphonies. So it’s appropriate that the Library’s third blog (behind this one and “Inside Adams” from the Science, Technology and Business Division) would come from the Music Division. …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Matt Raymond
The Library’s Prints and Photographs Division has added 116 photocrom travel views of the Netherlands from 100 years ago to our Flickr page, bringing the total number of photochroms on Flickr to 773. Photochroms, published primarily from the 1890s to 1910s, are prints that were created by the Photoglob Company in Zürich, Switzerland, and the …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Jennifer Gavin
A cartoon can be engaging and funny and tell a story without any audible sound at all; even newspaper cartoons of the 20th century featured characters such as Ferd’nand and The Little King, (external links) who went through their paces, frame-by-frame, with little or no dialogue to move the story along. But sometimes, more is more, as …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Jennifer Gavin
This guest post comes from Audrey Fischer of the Library’s Communications Office: Generations of former kids who learned their ABCs on PBS will be celebrating today’s 40th anniversary of the show “Sesame Street.” (external link) The Library’s been a fan right along! In April 2000, for example, when the Library of Congress celebrated its bicentennial, …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Matt Raymond
This feels a little like a birth announcement: The Library of Congress has launched its second official blog since the one you’re now reading took the blogosphere by storm in April 2007. (Hyperbole much?) The Library’s Science, Technology and Business Division is an excellent addition to our growing social-media family. The very name of the …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Matt Raymond
(The following is a guest post by Patricio Padua of the Library’s Collections and Services Division, h/t to Bryan Cornell in the Recorded Sound Reading Room.) Some years ago, a monk decked in an elegant black robe visited the Recorded Sound Reading Room in search of the music of his elders: Coptic Chant, which comes …
Posted in: Timeless
By: Jennifer Gavin
‘Tis the season to be frightened, and the Performing Arts Encyclopedia is full of ghastly tunes for the musical goblins in your life. We start with Jean Schwartz and William Jerome’s “The Ghost that Never Walked.” The team, best-known for the song “Chinatown my Chinatown,” put this 1904 number into the show “Piff! Paff! Pouf!” to tell the …
Posted in: Timeless