The 2025 class of the National Recording Registry is out today! Headliners include Elton John’s monumental album “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” Chicago’s debut “Chicago Transit Authority,” the original cast recording of Broadway’s “Hamilton,” Mary J. Blige’s “My Life,” Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black,” Microsoft’s reboot chime and the soundtrack to the Minecraft video game.
Ned Rorem could never stop thinking. Or writing, composing or socializing. He kept datebooks, scrapbooks and diaries, the last of which went for thousands of pages over decades. He composed more than 500 art songs, three symphonies, four piano concertos, more than half a dozen operas and on and on. These fill volumes and folders …
—This is a guest post by Adam M. Silvia, a curator in the Prints and Photographs Division. As a photojournalist, Taro Yamasaki photographed at-risk children in the United States and around the world — Nicaragua, Bosnia, Rwanda, the Middle East. The Prints and Photographs Division recently acquired three collections that document such work by the …
Legendary ragtime composer Scott Joplin died in poverty at age 48 in 1917 and left few personal artifacts behind; only three photographs of him are known to exist. The song that made him famous was the spirited "Maple Leaf Rag" in 1899. So 125 years later, when the Library's music staff pulls the two copies of "Maple Leaf Rag" sheet music that Joplin and his music publisher mailed in for copyright registration, it can produce an audible gasp.
Burt Bacharach, one of the most popular songwriters and composers in American history, was awarded the Gershwin Prize in 2012. He wrote or cowrote dozens of pop standards -- "Walk on By," "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head," "The Look of Love," "I Say a Little Prayer," "(They Long to Be) Close to You" -- mostly with lyricist Hal David. He also composed, arranged, conducted the band or orchestras for the recording sessions and recorded his own albums. His songs have been recorded by hundreds of artists around the world. His papers are now at the Library.
The folklorist Sidney Robertson was one of the trailblazing American women of the 1930s and 1940s, the kind of life you’d associate with Martha Gellhorn, Dorothea Lange or Zora Neale Hurston. Her work directing the California Folk Music Project from 1938-40 is the subject "California Gold," a new book from the Library and the University of California Press.
The Library's custom-designed multitracking studio at National Audio-Visual Conservation Center was built to house and preserve the collections of guitarist and audio-engineering innovator Les Paul. But it's also used to convert, preserve and save recordings made on formats that may not last. It's one of several labs that use cutting-edge technology to save the nation's recorded sound history.
The Oscar-winning songwriter and composer Richard Sherman, whose musical work with his brother was such an essential part of Walt Disney Studios that the company renamed their premier soundstage after them, passed away over the Memorial Day weekend. He was 95. Sherman was in good spirits in 2022 when "It's a Small World (After All)," their song for the Disney theme park ride of the same name, was inducted into the National Recording Registry. He spoke about their career of writing music and lyrics for hit Disney films such as "Mary Poppins," "The Jungle Book" and "Winnie the Pooh."
This June, the Library will open “Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress,” an exhibition that explores the ways cultures preserve memory and shows off some of the Library's most valuable holdings. The exhibition is the first in the Library’s new David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery.
