Top of page

Archive: November 2013 (8 Posts)

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Music & Native American Heritage Month

Posted by: Nicholas A. Brown-Cáceres

The Library of Congress, in collaboration with the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, maintains an exciting web portal for Native American Heritage Month. This web portal aggregates digital resources (exhibits, digitized print resources, audio and video) …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

#Britten100: Benjamin Britten & Peter Pears at the Library

Posted by: Nicholas A. Brown-Cáceres

Friday, November 22, 2013 marks the hundredth birthday of British composer Benjamin Britten, OM, CH (1913-1976), who is known for revolutionizing opera and British art music in the twentieth century. Britten holds a special place in the heart of the Music Division at the Library of Congress, as we house the manuscripts of two of …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Walking with Danny Kaye

Posted by: Pat Padua

The following is a guest post from retired cataloger Sharon McKinley. I’ve always enjoyed living vicariously through the Music Division’s special collections. Staffers who work in the Acquisitions and Processing Section become quite intimate with the collections they process. The rest of us are more likely to happen upon wonderful finds by serendipitous means. The …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Wagnerds Unite!

Posted by: David Plylar

There comes a time in every anniversary year when the candles must be blown out—this year it is a necessity, as 200 candles each for Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi constitute a fire hazard, and the Library does not want to host its own “immolation” scene. But Wotan to your seats—Concerts from the Library of …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Protest Songs Roundtable: Civil Rights, Unions, Immigrants and Stonewall

Posted by: Nicholas A. Brown-Cáceres

This Thursday the Music Division is pleased to present an engaging roundtable discussion that will examine the role of protest songs from the 1960s in shaping contemporary American culture. This program is part of a series of events at the Library of Congress that commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, which took …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Wagner Mania Podcast & Preview

Posted by: Nicholas A. Brown-Cáceres

Concerts from the Library of Congress is gearing up for a month full of events that pay homage to the great German opera composer, Richard Wagner (1813-1883), who would have turned 200 years-young in 2013. Since we cannot present a full production of Der Ring des Nibelungen in the Coolidge Auditorium, we thought we would …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Dear Dorothy: Letters from Nicolas Slonimsky to Dorothy Adlow

Posted by: Cait Miller

The following is a guest post from Senior Music Reference Specialist Kevin LaVine. As an author, musicologist, conductor, composer, pianist, teacher, theoretician, cultural ambassador and lexicographer, Nicolas Slonimsky’s contributions to music scholarship are both inestimable and enduring.  Slonimsky was born in Tsarist Russia in 1894 and pursued his initial musical studies in his native St. …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Lou Reed (1942-2013)

Posted by: Pat Padua

The music world lost one of its most influential voices last Sunday. Lou Reed  (1942-2013) headed a legendary rock band before embarking on a solo career that led him from glam-rocker to elder rock statesman.  The Velvet Underground released a handful of albums, each with a distinct personality that veered from blistering sonic experimentation to …