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Category: Newly Cataloged

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Music in Time of Pestilence, Part Two

Posted by: Paul Sommerfeld

The concluding part of this two-part survey of music and disease looks at examples that arose from pandemics in the 19th and 20th centuries, including: works by Stephen Foster and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel written in the wake of a series of cholera outbreaks, and the sometimes curiously lighthearted musical response to the 1918 influenza pandemic.

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

“The Original Radio Girl” and her De Luxe Revue

Posted by: Paul Sommerfeld

Taylor McClaskie is one of the Music Division’s summer 2019 interns. She is a Ph.D. candidate in musicology at Case Western Reserve University and is currently writing a dissertation on music and environmental activism in 1980s America. During my time in the Music Division I have been helping to process and catalogue unpublished popular music …

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

Johann Baptist Wanhal and the First Viennese School

Posted by: Paul Sommerfeld

The mention of late-eighteenth century Vienna frequently conjures thoughts of well-known composers like Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. But since I joined a project reporting pre-1800 imprints and manuscripts to RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales, an open-access database that lets you see which libraries have a certain published score or unique manuscript), I would like …