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Category: Music History and Appreciation

(ca. 1890) Peasants dancing, Bosnia, Austro-Hungary. , ca. 1890. [Between and Ca. 1900] [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2002710708/.

Béla Bartók and the Importance of Folk Music

Posted by: Juliette Appold

Béla Bartók was a seminal 20th-century composer and musicologist. Born in Hungary on March 25, 1881, he lived through World War I and experienced the beginnings of World War II, before immigrating with his second wife to the United States in 1940. He died in New York on September 26, 1945. What makes Bartók‘s works …

Close-up of the fingers of two hands as the touch a paged filled with raised dots

American Composers and Musicians from A to Z: F (Part 2 – Feliciano, José)

Posted by: Juliette Appold

José Feliciano is a guitarist, singer and songwriter best known for his interpretation of the songs “Feliz Navidad,” “Light My Fire” and “Hi-Heel Sneakers.” Feliciano was born blind on September 10, 1945 in Lares, Puerto Rico. At age five, his family moved to New York. José Feliciano always liked music and started playing the harmonica …

Close-up of the fingers of two hands as the touch a paged filled with raised dots

American Composers and Musicians from A to Z: C (Part 2 – Copland, Aaron)

Posted by: Juliette Appold

In our last blogpost we introduced blind musician Francis Joseph Campbell. Today’s entry is about one of the most famous American composers who had close connections to the Library of Congress: Aaron Copland. Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn, New York on November 14, 1900. He studied music from an early age and received formal …