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Category: Sheet Music

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Memorial Day

Posted by: Pat Padua

In the United States, Memorial Day is observed on the last Monday in May. The day was first set aside in 1868  “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Songs for Mother

Posted by: Pat Padua

Sunday, May 9, is Mother’s Day. My colleague on Inside Adams, the Science, Technology, and Business Blog, writes about the floral industry’s popularization of Mother’s Day here.  What better way to remember mothers living and passed away than with songs from the Music Division.  The Performing Arts Encyclopedia has over two hundred  pieces of sheet …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

The Three Johns

Posted by: Pat Padua

“It would be nice to hear someone say, ‘Look at that gas station in the moonlight. It’s pure John Adams.’ ” — John Adams, composer of  Nixon in China. [1] New Yorker music critic Alex Ross recently blogged about two different composers named John Adams, distinguished by their middle names of Luther and Coolidge. This common …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Take me out to the Ball Game

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 …

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I’m Frozen and I Can’t Play a Thing!

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 …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

A bit o’ Blarney from the Music Division

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 …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Great Mustaches of the Library of Congress: Music Division Edition

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 …