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Posted by: Cait Miller
Aaron Copland was born 111 years ago yesterday “on a street in Brooklyn that can only be described as drab,” as he wrote in the first sentence of his autobiographical sketch, Composer from Brooklyn (published in the Winter, 1968 issue of ASCAP Today – I’m reading a copy directly from the Copland Collection here in …
Posted in: Birthdays, Composers, Pic of the Week
Posted by: Cait Miller
When I first heard about the new French film, Mozart’s Sister, I immediately marked November 4th on my calendar, because Rene Feret’s new film opens at DC’s E Street Cinema today! Feret has made clear that the film is largely fiction, with historical roots in the Mozart family dynamics and women’s status in 18th-century Austrian …
Posted in: Composers, Film Music, Special Collections, Women in Music
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: Cait Miller
It’s July 7 – Gustav Mahler’s 151st birthday! Instead of highlighting manuscripts or correspondence by Mahler, I’d like instead to point out another composer/conductor’s commentary on Mahler, as provided in one of Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concert scripts, Who is Gustav Mahler? The script, along with all other scripts for the Young People’s Concert broadcasts, …
Posted in: Birthdays, Composers, Special Collections
Posted by: Cait Miller
In her list of “not to miss” DC performances this year, The Washington Post music critic Anne Midgette included the premiere of Finnish composer Olli Kortekangas’s Seven Songs for Planet Earth, which will be performed in a concert called “Northern Lights: Choral Illuminations from Scandinavia and Beyond” by The Choral Arts Society of Washington and …
Posted in: Composers
Posted by: Cait Miller
The following is a guest post from Mark Eden Horowitz, Senior Music Specialist, and curator for the Larson Collection. On Monday, May 9th at noon in the Whittall Pavilion, I will be discussing the Larson Collection and showing some of the rare and surprising treasures it holds. The special collections of the Music Division …
Posted in: Composers, Musical Theater, Staff
Posted by: Cait Miller
The following is a guest post from Music Archivist Chris Hartten. Morton Gould delighted American audiences for over seventy years with his impressive array of original symphonic compositions and arrangements. Born in New York in 1913, Gould quickly established himself as a tour de force on the radio and was recognized as one of the …
Posted in: Composers, Guest bloggers, Special Collections
Posted by: Cait Miller
The following is a guest post from Senior Producer in the Concert Office Anne McLean. A new music mini-series, Distinctly America!, brings a fascinating sampling of American composers–established and emerging–to the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium this spring (for a complete lineup of events, visit the Concerts from the Library of Congress website). George Crumb, Sebastian Currier …
Posted in: Composers, Concerts and Events
Posted by: Cait Miller
We are always excited to welcome composers to the Music Division as it not only affords us the opportunity to connect with new faces and perspectives in the music world, but also allows us the opportunity to appreciate how their activities are an extension of the legacies preserved here in the Library’s collections. This Friday, …
Posted in: Composers, Women in Music