Before the dawn of the Third Reich, Jewish scholar Hugo Leichtentritt encountered three fellow musicologists: Oscar Sonneck, Carl Engel, and Harold Spivacke. Each of these men would assume the role of Chief of the Music Division of the Library of Congress and be instrumental to the preservation of the oeuvres of international artists, including Leichtentritt.
Meet three members of the Seeger Family—Charles Seeger, Ruth Crawford Seeger, and their daughter Peggy Seeger—through their music, writings, and correspondence in the newly described Seeger Family Collection. This wide-ranging and personal collection provides a number of avenues for research in folk and modern music, musicology, and family history.
Part one of this two-part survey of musical responses to past pandemics focuses on sacred music from the years that the Black Death ravaged medieval Europe. Texts such as the Stella Celi Extirpavit and Recordare Domine illustrate the penitence and fear of the wrath of God that prevailed until the Enlightenment.
The Erich Wolfgang Korngold Collection at the Library of Congress contains correspondence, the majority of which is addressed to Luzi Korngold, Erich's wife, and provides insight into her work as a published author, Erich's assistant, and her close relationships with her extended family.
The Music Division celebrates the 257th birthday of composer Franz Ignaz Danzi, and summarizes efforts to report rare holdings to RISM, the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales.
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.
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.
To commemorate Steven Stucky's 70th birthday, staff recount a moving experience with the composer during his last visit to the Performing Arts Reading Room.
