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Posted by: Pat Padua
This week’s featured title comes from Henri Dora. “Puzzle March” is illustrated with the image of a refined gentleman hard at work on a puzzle whose solution would seem simple enough: to put the numbers one through fifteen in order. Our distinguished fop is nonetheless frustrated, frazzled, and finally driven mad by his inability to …
Posted in: Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
Legendary blues singer Bessie Smith was born on this day in 1894 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Portions of this blog post were taken from the online exhibit, American Treasures of the Library of Congress. Bessie Smith gained immediate success in 1923 with her first recording “Down Hearted Blues”/”Gulf Coast Blues.” Her renditions of Negro life in …
Posted in: Birthdays, Composers, Musicians, Pic of the Week, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections, Women in Music
Posted by: Pat Padua
The following is a guest post from Head of Acquisitions & Processing Denise Gallo. April 12 marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of Battle of Fort Sumter, the first major conflict of the Civil War. Having seceded from the Union four months earlier, South Carolina had been demanding that the Union evacuate the fort. …
Posted in: Guest bloggers, Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
The following is a guest post by Senior Cataloging Specialist Sharon McKinley. The Library of Congress has amazing depth in its holdings of sheet music, thanks in large part to Copyright deposits. It’s Showtime is a database of excerpts from operas, musicals and musical revues, films, and more. You’ll find over 18,000 shows and productions …
Posted in: Guest bloggers, Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
Continuing Wednesday’s puppy theme and expanding our range of species is this week’s featured sheet music, from the composer of last week’s “Baby Elephant Waltz.” The August 1921 Etude, a serial issued by music publisher Theodore Presser, tells us that Pierre Latour was the nom de plume of one E. Mack, who presumably thought the …
Posted in: Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
Next Tuesday the annual DC Elephant Walk comes to town, bringing with it the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. This week we celebrate the mighty pachyderm with F. F. Hagen’s “Baby Elephant March.” For another example of the dimunitive animal’s terpsichorean versatility, see Pierre Latour’s “Baby Elephant Waltz,” which also hails from the Historic …
Posted in: Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell conducted his first successful experiment with the telephone. Today we remember the fateful invention that changed the world with this week’s featured sheet music. H. W. Durand’s “The Telephone” dates from just nine years after Bell’s celebrated experiment, and already the songwriter declares that “There’s no need of …
Posted in: Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week
Posted by: Pat Padua
A frenzied woodland gathering beneath a full moon; no, it’s not the thrilling conclusion to the Nicolas Cage vehicle Drive Angry 3-D but the subject of the unusual cover art (best viewed large) of this week’s featured sheet music. My research behind the pages has frequently taken me places I did not expect to virtually …
Posted in: Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
The Battle of the Alamo began on this date in 1836. In the Muse remembers this fight for independence with our Sheet Music of the Week, penned by Percy Wenrich and Ben Deely. The songwriters’ grasp of the actual battle seems tenuous , as Deely’s lyrics appear to riff on “Alamo” simply because, unlike “orange,” …
Posted in: Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections