Tomorrow we celebrate the birthday of one of the Twentieth Century’s most well-known composers and music pedagogues, Carl Orff (1895-1982). Although Orff may be best known for his cantata Carmina Burana, he is also quite well-known in the music education field because of “Orff Schulwerk,” an elementary approach to music he co-developed with his colleague Gunild …
As this post is published, I hope everyone is preparing for the July 4th celebration. Along with fireworks, grilling at picnics, sunflowers, ice cream and the patriotic significance of this date, I enjoy a parade–any parade. Especially those with floats, clowns, men with funny hats, and of course, marching bands. This most recent Memorial Day …
My colleague, Amanda Smith recently blogged about one of our magazines Musical Mainstream. While I have written of my classical music background and attend concerts in the area, I still like to be connected with what is trending in popular music. Contemporary Soundtrack is a compilation of magazine articles and reviews of popular music, featuring …
A few weeks ago, I published an interview with NLS narrator Laura Giannarelli. In it, she talks about how she became a Talking Book narrator, and some of her favorite parts of the program. Ms. Giannarelli is one of the many narrators who narrate the liner notes of our newly acquired Smithsonian Folkways books. She …
Musical Mainstream is one of two magazines produced by the NLS music section for our patrons. Music librarians, including myself, compile and create these Magazines. Musical Mainstream is a magazine containing current articles and audio music reviews reprinted from popular music magazines and journals. Its subject matter is classical music, and it includes information about …
By now I’m sure most of the readers of this blog have become familiar with the types of materials the music section offers: large print, braille, and audio. And although we have gone into detail about how we acquire and preserve braille and large print, we have yet to talk about what actually goes into …
The work of digitizing the Music Section‘s braille music scores continues unabated. Details of the Section’s scanners and software were discussed in a previous post. Since then, the German scanner has served as the driving resource for digitizing braille music items. The digital copies of scores and parts are backed up and archived, serving as …
Abigail Adams, in a letter dated March 31st, 1776 to her husband John Adams, advised him to “remember the ladies” in the creation of the new government, independent from Great Britain. This post will be published after March 31st and while Women’s History Month is past, I beg your patience as I also ask you …
This post was co-written with John Hanson. This post addresses what we have heard are occasional problems or misunderstandings of our online resources, what they are, and how to access and/or download wanted scores and books. Catalogs The Text-only version of our catalog (accessible as the second link at http://nlscatalog.loc.gov), is the only complete and …
