The following is a guest post from saxophonist Chris Potter, who participated in the Music Division’s Finding Strayhorn discussion panel on June 12, 2019. My visit to the Library of Congress fortunately coincided with the announcement that the Billy Strayhorn Music Manuscripts and Estate Papers are now available for the public to study. I was […]
Details the story behind how baseball’s most well-known song, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” came to be.
Part two of the Music Division’s introduction to the Summer 2019 interns, discussing their work for the Music Division and their own research projects conducted using Library of Congress collections.
He was only 36 when he died in Berlin in 1964, but the gifted, avant-garde innovator Eric Dolphy (June 20, 1928-June 29, 1964) helped change the landscape for jazz improvisers through his collaborations with John Coltrane, Gunther Schuller, Charles Mingus and his own projects. He was a multi-instrumentalist who found his distinctive voice on alto […]
Each summer, several interns arrive at the Music Division to complete a variety of projects with our collections. This year, we’re introducing them as they arrive, and will share stories of what they discover throughout their time at the Library. This week, we’re introducing our two Junior Fellows, Chloe Hovind and Hannah Reynolds. Library Science […]
The following is a guest post from Music Division scholar-volunteer K. Mitchell “Mitch” Snow, with an introduction from Dance Archivist Libby Smigel. Readers of the Music Division’s In the Muse blog will have already met Mitch Snow through his posting on the Maxine Glorsky Papers. His scholarly pursuits have made him invaluable in many quarters […]
May 27, 2019 is the 200th birthday of suffragist, abolitionist, and writer Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910). She was also a vocalist, composer, and lyricist. The Music Division holds many treasures for you to discover Julia Ward Howe’s musical side.
I’ve known saxophonist-composer Archie Shepp’s work for more than four decades, not only through his body of recordings but from a long interview we did in 1982. When I heard he was coming to Washington to receive his National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award at the Kennedy Center, I wrote him and suggested […]
The following is a guest post from Dr. Christopher Dylan Herbert. Dr. Herbert is a baritone and musicologist. He is an assistant professor of music at William Paterson University and is a member of the Grammy-nominated quartet New York Polyphony. An extended version of this blog will be published as an article in volume 76, […]
The mention of late-eighteenth century Vienna frequently conjures thoughts of well-known composers like Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. But since I joined a project reporting pre-1800 imprints and manuscripts to RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales, an open-access database that lets you see which libraries have a certain published score or unique manuscript), I would like […]