Today, as will happen every other Friday for the next several months, additional batches of photographs from the William P. Gottlieb Collection have been uploaded to Flickr . This week’s set is particularly varied, with classic portraits of Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstine, Tommy Dorsey, Doris Day, Nat “King” Cole, and Perry Como. In addition to these portraits are …
Pianist, bandleader, composer, William “Count” Basie was born on this day in 1904. Some of the greatest names in jazz passed through his band, from tenor legend Lester Young to singers like Bille Holiday, Jimmy Rushing, and Joe Williams, just to name three. Basie’s career spanned fifty years and did not shy from whatever music happened …
This post is excerpted from an article written by James Wolf, Digital Conversion Specialist, Music Division. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (named after the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge) was born in Croydon, England on August 15, 1875. Coleridge-Taylor studied with Charles Villiers Stanford, and at the suggestion of Edward Elgar, was commissioned to write a piece for a …
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 …
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 …
Today we remember the July birthdays of two very different musical luminaries represented in the Music Division’s august coffers. Ernest Bloch was born July 24th, 1880. A special performance of his viola suite was given on December 10th, 2009, in the Coolidge Auditorium by violist Roberto Diaz and pianist Andrew Tyson to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary …
Composer Roger Reynolds was born July 18, 1934 in Detroit, Michigan. Ciro G. Scotto, in his 1992 volume Contemporary Composers, wrote that Reynolds “has created a body of work that encompasses nearly every major musical development in the 20th century.” In an article written for the Library of Congress Information Bulletin in 2002, Senior Music Specialist …
Last week In the Muse brought you “The Battle of the Sewing Machines,” a 19th century piano piece that fondly mimics the chug of an old sewing machine. The piece features cover art that depicts sundry anthropomorphic sewing machines on the attack, revealing perhaps a bit of 19th century tension at the fate of man …
Just over the transom via the American Folklife Center’s Facebook page, today is the birthday of Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine. Celebrate Howe’s gift, not only to the garment industry, but to mankind, with “The Battle of the Sewing Machines,” F. Hyde’s rhythmic impersonation of that old-fashioned sewing machine sound ca. 1874. The …
