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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
Posted by: Cait Miller
In recognition of President’s Day, I thought I would join NPR’s classical music blog, Deceptive Cadence, in highlighting the newly recorded choral cycle, Mr. President, commissioned in 2004 by Judith Clurman (renowned choral conductor and NPR’s Artist in Residence for the month of February). The cycle consists of 13 choral settings of quotations from various …
Posted in: Holidays, Sheet Music
Posted by: Pat Padua
A major national magazine has just published their highly anticipated annual swimsuit edition. The art blog Modern Art Notes recently put out a call to museums for their first annual swimsuit post. In the Muse offers its own modest suggestions for beach apparel, in the fashion that was all the rage of 1914. Who knows what the amorous …
Posted in: Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
In the Muse has been under the weather lately, but has been dragged out of sick bay to bring sheet music to a readership clamoring for songs to sing. This week’s humorous tale of childhood disease is brought to you by a husband and wife songwriting team that is little known today, Irene Franklin and …
Posted in: Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
There’s a big game on this Sunday, and while In the Muse does not have a dog in this fight, we can provide music for a victory dance should the Green Bay Packers emerge victorious. Should the Pittsburgh Steelers snack on the opposition, they can celebrate their renewed dynasty with “The Age of Steel,” from …
Posted in: Birthdays, Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
The city and the Nation have their eyes on the Main Reading Room, which is currently hosting an unexpected visitor in the studious form of a Cooper’s Hawk. This edition of Sheet Music of the Week features a pair of creatures that are unlikely to find their way to our workplace – but if they …
Posted in: Sheet Music, Sheet Music of the Week, Special Collections