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Posted by: Pat Padua
The following post is taken in part from an article written by Susan Clermont, Music Specialist, for the Performing Arts Encyclopedia. Like no other American sport, baseball has been glorified and preserved in musical form by inspired songwriters and poets since its beginnings. In 1858, the year when amateur baseball teams in the northeast established …
Posted in: Sheet Music, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
The following post is by Norman Middleton, Senior Concert Producer in the Music Division. Concert hall conniptions. High note heebeegeebees. Booze, drugs, and wastepaper baskets. The issues surrounding performance anxiety, commonly known as “stage fright” will be examined by Senior Concert Producer Norman Middleton on April 9th at 6:15 p.m. in the Jefferson Building’s LJ119 …
Posted in: Sheet Music
Posted by: Pat Padua
The Music Division’s bonnie collections offer a variety of ways to celebrate this St. Patrick’s Day. Play an Irish bagpipe from the Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection. Follow along to the reels described in Rinnce na h-Éireann : a simplified work on the performance of the dances of Ireland, from An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Manuals. Develop …
Posted in: Dance, Musical Instruments, Sheet Music, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
Our present-day fascination with the facial hair of yore may have behind it a number of reasons: a yearning for the sartorial elegance of by-gone days; an urge to lampoon the historical patriarchal hegemony; the deep-seated instinct, like that found among birdwatchers and trainspotters, to catalogue the varieties of hirsute experience; a lot of spare …
Posted in: Sheet Music, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
Bandleader-accordionist Lawrence Welk was the musical voice of a faraway time in America, before punk rock, hip-hop, and Lady Gaga. The son of German immigrants from the Ukraine, Welk was born in Strasburg, North Dakota on March 11, 1903. The first big break in Welk’s long and storied career came in 1927, when Lawrence Welk …
Posted in: Birthdays, Sheet Music, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
In Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of the Anthony Burgess novel A Clockwork Orange, Malcolm Macdowell is memorably conditioned to veer from his life of ultra-violence with generous doses of Ludwig Van. But does music really sooth the savage breast? Does blasting Barry Manilow at high volume drive away delinquent teenagers? The answer may surprise you. …
Posted in: Podcasts, Sheet Music
Posted by: Pat Padua
On this date in 1931, President Herbert Hoover signed the Act establishing “The Star Spangled Banner” as the National Anthem of the United States of America. The Library of Congress has in its collections a treasure trove of sheet music (including a Spanish-language edition), song sheets (including two in German), and recordings of “The Star …
Posted in: Sheet Music, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
The brooding artist type: you know one, you’ve been one, you’ve seen one in the coffeshop thinking deep thoughts and crying as they type furiously into their laptop. But does depression help or hinder creative thought? Last year the Coolidge Auditorium hosted a symposium on “Depression and Creativity” as part of the “Music and the …
Posted in: Composers, Sheet Music
Posted by: Pat Padua
The holiday weekend may have been last week, but George Washington’s actual birthday is celebrated on February 22 [1]. The Music Division has in its storied coffers a number of ways to celebrate this historic date in song. You may know that George M. Cohan composed Over There and countless other melodies for the Broadway …
Posted in: Birthdays, Sheet Music