The following is a guest post from Processing Technician Pam Murrell. In addition to being an adroit cellist, bassist, and pianist, Charles Mingus was also an accomplished composer. During his lifetime he wrote over three hundred scores, creating his first concert piece, “Half-Mast Inhibition,” at the age of seventeen. Ultimately, he aspired to be a […]
On Patriots’ Day, we celebrate musician, publisher, and patriot Josiah Flagg (1737-1794), a friend of Paul Revere and major figure in Early American music.
This blog post celebrates composer David Diamond’s contributions to the enrichment of Jewish synagogue music. The Music Division of the Library of Congress is home to the David Diamond Collection.
On March 29, the musical world lost a giant – Polish composer and conductor Krzysztof Penderecki. The Library of Congress Music Division remains connected to Penderecki through primary sources in our collections, and we hope that you can remain connected to him in this way, as well.
Musician Machito (c. 1908-1984) and his group the Afro-Cubans performed from 1940 to the early 1980s, forming an influential legacy that includes salsa music and Afro-Cuban jazz. The Music of Machito and His Afro-Cubans collection primarily contains approximately 150 manuscript and published compositions and arrangements performed by the ensemble.
This post introduces the John Herbert McDowell Papers, which include McDowell’s musical scores for film, modern dance, Off-Off Broadway, and sacred and secular music, as well as programs, scripts, and photographs.
Learn more about conductor and cornet player Leonard B. Smith and his Detroit Concert Band through his concert band and orchestra library, personal music collection, correspondence, clippings, programs, and photographs.
On Rossini’s leap day birthday we highlight a Rossini manuscript for a recitative and sketch from his opera Moïse, held in the Music Division’s Moldenhauer Archive.
The following is a guest post from Ben West, writer, director, producer, performer, and musical theatre historian. He is currently a curator for the forthcoming Museum of Broadway in Times Square, New York City. He is also currently writing and developing several stage projects including The Show Time! Trilogy, three new documentary musicals about the evolution […]
The Jerome Kern Collection features correspondence, including love letters from Jerome Kern to his wife Eva Leale and a letter to her father requesting his blessing to propose.