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Posted by: Pat Padua
Caped crusaders are not the only ones who don masks as a career choice. A recent show and tell in the Music Division curated by the Music Division’s Elizabeth Aldrich, with Dance Heritage Fellows Nicole Topich and Kirsten Wilkinson, showcased items from special collections in dance. This mask was used by Armgard von Bardeleben (1940-2012) in …
Posted in: Dance, New Acquisitions, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
I recently toured the Archives of American Art’s new exhibit, “Six Degrees of Peggy Bacon. ” The exhibit riffs on the idea of “six degrees of separation” popularly associated with actor Kevin Bacon, and uses as its central figure New York artist Peggy Bacon, who is little remembered today but was a well-connected member of …
Posted in: Composers, Exhibitions, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
The following is a guest post by Dance Heritage Coalition Fellow Nicole Topich. Processing the Marge Champion Collection in the Music Division has been one of the most exciting archives jobs I have held. The collection is not very large, but almost every item I found was interesting or historically significant. Because the collection has …
Posted in: Dance, Guest bloggers, Pic of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
The children’s prayer that begins, “Now I lay me down to sleep” dates back to an 18th century New England primer, but its musical life has followed a surprising path over the more than two centuries since. From heavy metal (Metallica) to hip-hop (The Notorious B.I.G.) to indie rock (Liz Phair), the iconic words have …
Posted in: Composers, Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
The following is a guest post by Senior Music Cataloger Sharon McKinley. The Library of Congress Chorale’s Spring concert is this Thursday, June 7. Cinema in Concert will be presented at noon in the JeffersonBuilding, Coolidge Auditorium. It is free to staff and the public, so if you’re in the neighborhood, stop on by! It’s …
Posted in: Composers, Concerts and Events, Guest bloggers, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
The 2011 National Recording Registry selections were announced this morning, and as always the titles are great fodder for an eclectic, historically important, culturally influential mix-tape. Among the titles is one of my very favorite albums, Love’s Forever Changes, a relic of 1967 whose lush string arrangements, rich melodies, and alternately pastoral and visionary lyrics make …
Posted in: Musicians, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
When I prepared the Martha Graham Collection for digitization some years ago, I looked at hundreds of clippings that the legendary choreography kept in her detailed scrapbooks. Something struck me about the dance reviews. Regular columns by certain music critics were accompanied by a thumbnail photo of the author. In the scrapbook pages of the Graham …
Posted in: Pic of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
Fans of the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows were saddened by the death last week of star Jonathan Frid, who played the vampire Barnabas Collins. This week’s featured sheet music does not speak of vampires or other shadowy figures. But its lyrical plea to “meet me in the shadows” is at once romantic and sinister, and …
Posted in: Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Cait Miller
Within our nearly 600 archival collections in the Music Division lie not only scores, sketches, correspondence and iconography, but countless untold stories. Being able to piece together these stories and uncover a stranger’s personality and contribution to our cultural history is one of the greatest joys I get to experience working here. A few weeks …
Posted in: Special Collections, Theater, Women in Theater