Meet three members of the Seeger Family—Charles Seeger, Ruth Crawford Seeger, and their daughter Peggy Seeger—through their music, writings, and correspondence in the newly described Seeger Family Collection. This wide-ranging and personal collection provides a number of avenues for research in folk and modern music, musicology, and family history.
The Library of Congress has recently published two LibGuides related to jazz music. They are “Jazz Stock Arrangements: A Resource Guide” and “Jazz Research at the Library of Congress.”
Part one of this two-part survey of musical responses to past pandemics focuses on sacred music from the years that the Black Death ravaged medieval Europe. Texts such as the Stella Celi Extirpavit and Recordare Domine illustrate the penitence and fear of the wrath of God that prevailed until the Enlightenment.
The Erich Wolfgang Korngold Collection at the Library of Congress contains correspondence, the majority of which is addressed to Luzi Korngold, Erich’s wife, and provides insight into her work as a published author, Erich’s assistant, and her close relationships with her extended family.
The following is a guest post by Reader Services Technician Mary Joy Lamb. While working as a technician in the Library of Congress Music Division I came across Clifford Hayes’s copyright lead sheet for “Bye Bye Blues” from 1928. The yellowed paper, the rushed corrections, and the date caught my eye. I snapped an image […]
Columnist Burt Boyar spent much of his life documenting the annals of Sammy Davis, Jr., a generational tour de force who surmounted extraordinary odds with his prodigious talent.
The Music Division celebrates the 257th birthday of composer Franz Ignaz Danzi, and summarizes efforts to report rare holdings to RISM, the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales.
The Alex North Papers document the career of American film composer Alex North and are now processed for researchers to consult in the Performing Arts Reading Room of the Library of Congress.
The following is a guest post from Senior Music Specialist Loras Schissel. In 1930, John Philip Sousa set down his memories of playing in the first violin section in a special grand orchestra assembled for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia during the summer of 1876. The conductor of this orchestra was the celebrated composer Jacques […]
My experience reading works like Cervantes’ Don Quixote or Boccaccio’s Decameron always leaves me with a sense of déjà vu. How is it that people who lived so many centuries ago can still sound so modern, so relevant? While there is a “liter-heiry” influence of these writers to be felt in recent works, it also […]