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Category: Women in Music

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Mary Hallock Greenewalt: Rembrandt of the Piano

Posted by: Cait Miller

The following is a guest post from Lara Szypszak, Reference Librarian in the Manuscript Division. Mary Hallock Greenewalt (1871-1950) was a musician, inventor, businesswoman, and all around go-getter, whose work leaves traces throughout several divisions of the Library of Congress, most prominently in the Manuscript and Music Divisions. Greenewalt was born in Bhamdoun, a small …

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Polarizing Political Issues: The Anti-Suffrage Rose

Posted by: Cait Miller

The following is a guest post from Senior Music Cataloging Specialist Laura Yust. Laura’s post marks the final blog post in our Women’s History Month series that highlights selections from the Music Division’s digital collection Woman’s Suffrage in Sheet Music. The suffragists of the early 20th century faced organized opposition from the anti-suffragists, both men …

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Suffrage Music on Parade: Part Two

Posted by: Cait Miller

As promised, every Wednesday this month In the Muse is featuring a blog post that highlights stories and names that lie within the Music Division’s recently-launched digital collection, Women’s Suffrage in Sheet Music. Last week, I located a newspaper article that contextualized Fanny Connable Lancaster and Florence Livingston Lent’s “Suffrage Marching Song” and described its …

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Suffrage Music on Parade

Posted by: Cait Miller

The Music Division’s latest digital collection, Women’s Suffrage in Sheet Music, includes over 200 pieces of music related to women’s emerging voices in the 19th century and more directly to the women’s suffrage movement. The collection provides multiple lenses through which a researcher can process the political struggle of the time, including music specifically written …

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Mary Cardwell Dawson: First Lady of Opera

Posted by: Cait Miller

The following is a guest post from Music Reference Specialist Sam Perryman. Some people know that the Music Division is home to the National Negro Opera Company Collection. They also know that, while it’s not the first African American opera company, it was one of the largest.  It was founded and managed by Mary Lucinda …

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#Declassified This Weekend: Rebecca Clarke and her Viola Sonata at 100

Posted by: Cait Miller

This Saturday, March 2, at 11:00am in the Jefferson Building’s Coolidge Auditorium, I look forward to participating in a special program dedicated to 20th-century composer Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979). One hundred years ago, in 1919, Clarke’s Viola Sonata was a close runner up to receive Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge’s Berkshire Prize at the second annual Berkshire Festival …