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Posted by: Pat Padua
Summer means baseball, and baseball has a long history of superstition, but before you decide to stop bathing after your next no-hitter, remember that the performing arts is far from immune to the allure of old wives’ tales. The most notable superstition in the repertoire may be that of theater professionals who refer to one …
Posted in: Composers, Sheet Music, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
The following is a guest post by Christopher M. Reali, Graduate Musicology Student, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. This past summer I, along with two fellow colleagues from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, was awarded the James W. Pruett Summer Research Fellowships in Music at the Library of Congress. During the months of June and …
Posted in: Guest bloggers, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
In the Muse does not ordinarily send two missives into the blogosphere in a single day, but we could not let the day pass without honoring the man playing trumpet on the banner that heads every page of this blog. Jazz legend Louis Armstrong was born on this day in 1901. His influence can be …
Posted in: African American History, Birthdays, Jazz, Musicians, Special Collections
Posted 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: Digital Collections, Musical Instruments, Special Collections
Posted 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 Memoriam, Jazz, Musicians, Special Collections
Posted 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: Birthdays, Composers, Special Collections