Top of page

Category: Composers

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

Higdon’s Viola Concerto: A Library of Congress Commission and a Grammy Nom!

Posted by: Cait Miller

The 2018 Grammy nominations were announced this morning, and among the lineup you can find a work co-commissioned by the Library of Congress! Pulitzer Prize winner and American composer Jennifer Higdon’s Viola Concerto was co-commissioned by the Library of Congress (with support from the family of Cameron and Jane Baird, and John J. Medveckis), the …

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

A Musical Artifact Rediscovered for Nagrin and Starer’s Indeterminate Figure

Posted by: Cait Miller

Last week we featured a guest post from summer Fellow Rachel McNellis who shared discoveries from her work with the Daniel Nagrin Collection. This week she links an unidentified score titled “Vanity” to one of Nagrin’s seminal dance works, Indeterminate Figure.   Daniel Nagrin, a renowned modern dancer with a humanist worldview, included this brief …

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

Stars and Stripes and Sousa…Forever! Music Division Acquires the Christopher Dodrill – John Philip Sousa Papers

Posted by: Cait Miller

The following is a guest post by Senior Music Specialist Loras John Schissel.   We are pleased to announce the acquisition of a collection of rare John Philip Sousa materials donated by the well-known educator and Sousa researcher Christopher Dodrill. The collection includes many first editions of Sousa’s marches and concert works in mint condition. …

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

Monteverdi Turns the Big 450!

Posted by: Cait Miller

On May 9, 1567, one of music history’s most revered composers was born – Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi. To look at the whole of Monteverdi’s exquisite compositional output is to understand the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque era in music. Some of the most exciting early printings in our collections include early editions …

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

Happy Birthday to “Little Mozart”

Posted by: Cait Miller

The Music Division is home to some magnificent Mozart manuscripts, from his Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major, K. 219, to a handwritten letter from 14 year-old Wolfgang to his sister Nannerl, to his revered Gran Partita. In addition to these (fully digitized!) Mozart manuscripts, our collections also feature reflections and commentary on the …