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Posted by: Cait Miller
2012 is almost upon us! The Music Division certainly had an exciting year with many accomplishments from digital projects such as the launch of the Music Treasures Consortium last February, to two successfully curated exhibits (Coast to Coast: The Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939 and I Love Lucy: An American Legend), to the continued production of …
Posted in: Holidays, Sheet Music of the Week
Posted by: Cait Miller
Have you been to the Madison Building yet to see the Library’s “I Love Lucy: An American Legend” exhibit? Local readers, you have exactly one month to plan a trip over here! The exhibit opened last August to celebrate the show’s 60th anniversary as well as Lucille Ball’s 100th birthday and will remain open to …
Posted in: Exhibitions
Posted by: Cait Miller
Today marks the official beginning of Winter (though you wouldn’t know it in DC – it’s 60 degrees outside!). What could be a more fitting Sheet Music of the Week selection than the lovely color cover for Jean Schwartz’s and Grant Clarke’s “Winter Nights” ? Jean Schwartz (1888-1956) was one of the most prolific composers …
Posted in: Sheet Music of the Week
Posted by: Cait Miller
The following is a guest post from Head of Acquisitions & Processing Denise Gallo. Don’t get me wrong – I’m definitely a 21st-century woman. That I’m blogging is proof of that. Yet I frequently find myself in the 19th century. As a musicologist, I rub elbows with Rossini, Verdi, Schumann, and Brahms, but I find …
Posted in: Guest bloggers, Sheet Music of the Week, Women in Music
Posted by: Cait Miller
The following is a guest post from Music Archivist Chris Hartten. Laurence Picken (featured at right as our Pic of the Week!) first made his mark in academia as a scientist, but here in the Music Division we remember Picken as an eminent musicologist who spent nearly sixty years studying the musical traditions of East …
Posted in: Asian American History, Pic of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Cait Miller
Aaron Copland was born 111 years ago yesterday “on a street in Brooklyn that can only be described as drab,” as he wrote in the first sentence of his autobiographical sketch, Composer from Brooklyn (published in the Winter, 1968 issue of ASCAP Today – I’m reading a copy directly from the Copland Collection here in …
Posted in: Birthdays, Composers, Pic of the Week
Posted by: Cait Miller
Seventy-three years ago today, Irving Berlin’s patriotic song “God Bless America” was premiered by singer Kate Smith on her CBS radio show in recognition of what was then called Armistice Day. November 11th is now known as Veterans Day, but the power and popularity of Berlin’s song endures. Would you believe that the song was …
Posted in: Holidays, Sheet Music of the Week
Posted by: Cait Miller
When I first heard about the new French film, Mozart’s Sister, I immediately marked November 4th on my calendar, because Rene Feret’s new film opens at DC’s E Street Cinema today! Feret has made clear that the film is largely fiction, with historical roots in the Mozart family dynamics and women’s status in 18th-century Austrian …
Posted in: Composers, Film Music, Special Collections, Women in Music
Posted by: Cait Miller
The following is a guest post from Senior Music Specialist Ray White. Sixty years ago, on October 15, 1951, America met Lucy and Ricky Ricardo for the first time. She was a housewife with dreams of a career in show business, and her bandleader husband was as determined to keep her out of show business …
Posted in: Exhibitions, Special Collections