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 […]
Did you know that the Music Division has been an integral part of creating contemporary music since 1925? In honor of Women’s History Month, I’d like to share an impressive list of “firsts” – the first women composers commissioned by each fund in the Library of Congress Music Division!
The following is a guest post by Senior Music Specialist (and Red Sox fan) Susan Clermont: If you were asked to name a popular song about baseball, most likely you’d begin singing the chorus to the 1908 hit Take Me Out to the Ball Game, the third most recognized tune in the United States. What […]
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 […]
Join us this Saturday, March 16, from 10-11:30am! The Music Division, together with the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, will offer a research orientation on how to find film music resources at the Library of Congress. These resources are located in the Performing Arts Reading Room, Moving Image Research Center, and Recorded Sound Research Center, […]
For as long as socially and politically aware citizens have gathered to voice dissent, music has served a paramount role; the women’s suffrage movement proves no exception. From local community suffrage meetings, to large-scale city-wide marches, to prison cells — suffragists consistently unified, rallied, and asserted their unbreakable spirit in song. Women’s Suffrage in Sheet […]
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 […]
February is Black History Month! The Music Division has all the resources you need to explore and appreciate African-American contributions to the performing arts year-round, not only in February.
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 […]
The following is a guest post from music archivist Anita M. Weber. Milton Berle, who lived to be 94, did it all. He was a child actor and juvenile dancer who became a vaudeville emcee, stand-up comic, and Friars Club roastmaster. He acted on radio, stage, and screen. He wrote song lyrics, novels, short stories, […]