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Posted by: Pat Padua
The following is a guest post by Head of Acquisitions & Processing Denise Gallo. On Sept. 22, 1862, Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation stating “That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of …
Posted in: Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
The following is a guest post from Senior Music Reference Specialist Kevin LaVine. Throughout the 1930s, as the developing Soviet state was liquidating Tsarist property in order to generate funding for its ambitious projects, Herbert Putnam, the Librarian of Congress at that time, seized the opportunity to purchase approximately 2800 volumes which were formerly held …
Posted in: Pic of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Cait Miller
The following is a guest post from Music Archivist Chris Hartten. George Antheil radicalized musical composition in ways that few before him had ever attempted. Born at the turn of the twentieth century in Trenton, New Jersey, Antheil traveled to Europe in 1922 to pursue “ultra-modernist” composition with financial support from arts patroness and Curtis …
Posted in: Composers, Guest bloggers, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
The following is a guest post by Senior Music Cataloger Sharon McKinley. The battle for the right to vote was hard-fought by women in America and elsewhere. The last state to ratify the 19th amendment to the US Constitution was Tennessee, on August 18, 1920. Today it seems unthinkable …
Posted in: Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections, Women in Music
Posted by: Pat Padua
In The Muse was going to celebrate a number of August birthdays today, but a little 5.8 magnitude bird impels us otherwise. Yesterday an earthquake was felt along the Eastern seaboard from Virginia to Maine, but today all Library buildings are open. If our readership should “begin to shake and shiver” today, we hope that …
Posted in: Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
In the Muse was sad to learn of the passing of two great songwriters. Nick Ashford and Jerry Leiber were both part of songwriting teams that helped define American popular music for different generations. The songs of Leiber and partner Mike Stoller have been performed by a full spectrum of artists, from Elvis Presley to …
Posted in: Composers, Special Collections
Posted by: Cait Miller
The following is a guest post from 2011 Junior Fellow Jarek Ervin. My name is Jarek Ervin, and I spent my summer working as a Junior Fellow for the Music Division at the Library of Congress. During the year, I am a graduate student studying Music History at Temple University. My research is mostly focused …
Posted in: Guest bloggers, Special Collections
Posted by: Cait Miller
The following is a guest post from 2011 Junior Fellow Dana Barron. The familiar titles were there: Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Puccini’s Tosca, Wagner’s Parsifal. Others were slightly less well known: Lighthouse by Peter Maxwell Davies and Castor et Pollux by Jean-Philippe Rameau. And some were downright obscure: La morte di Oloferne, the sole surviving …
Posted in: Guest bloggers, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
In the Muse hopes our readers in the Northern Hemisphere are having an enjoyable summer. Things have been hot in Washington, and Morris S. Silver and Tom Confare’s “Sunbeam,” from the Historic Sheet Music, 1800-1922 collection in the Performing Arts Encyclopedia, may provide cool solace in the form of song. This illustration of a demonic sun — undoubtedly a …
Posted in: Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections