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Music... the favorite passion of my soul.~ Thomas Jefferson

Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought.--E.Y. Harburg (Edgar Yipsel) (1898 - 1981)

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.--Victor Hugo

Use these lesson plans (created by educators for educators) to explore topics about science and invention with your students in your classroom:

Twain's Hannibal - (Grades 9-12) Using both primary source documents and print materials, students analyze life around Hannibal, Missouri, during the latter half of the 19th century to determine what effects this location had on the writings of Mark Twain. Part of this lesson includes sheet music analysis.

Stand Up and Sing - (Grades 7-12) Students analyze issues related to industrialization and reform by exploring sheet music and creating original songs.

Exploring Cultural Rituals - (General Reference,) In this lesson, students investigate rituals and customs of various cultures and then explore their own cultural rituals through interviews with family. Activity 3 includes an intercultural music activity.

America Dreams - (Grades 4-12) Students complete an interdisciplinary WebQuest to learn the story of a decade in American history, as they help define the American Dream. In this lesson, students can take the role of a musician.

Two Unreconciled Strivings - (Grades 11-12) Students examine the tension experienced by African-Americans during the Gilded Age. This lesson includes the study of sheet music as a reflection of cultural attitudes.

Nature's Fury - (Grades 6-8) Students examine accounts by Americans from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of their life changing experiences with nature. The artifact gallery includes songs that account nature

What are We Fighting for Over There? - (Grades 10-12) Students create World War I era newspapers with different perspectives on American involvement in the war. Lesson 1 includes World War I song sheet analysis.

Is there a title (or two) that you always read to (or with) your students when teaching about this theme? Are there invaluable reference books that you use? Staff from The Library of Congress have begun a collection of titles for the "Music in America " theme. We hope you will contribute your favorites to our growing bibliography!

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Create your own collaborative lesson plans using material related to this month's theme assembled from The Learning Page Collection Connections:

Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, 1820-1860 - (Summary and Teaching Resources) This collection includes popular songs, operatic arias, piano music, sacred and secular vocal music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and some music for band and orchestra.

Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, 1870-1885 - (Summary and Teaching Resources) This collection demonstrates how popular music reflected sentiments surrounding the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Development of the Industrial United States beginning in 1876

America Singing: Nineteenth-Century Song Sheets - (Summary and Teaching Resources) The pieces in this collection reflect the attitudes of 19th century songwriters and their audiences and provide commentary on contemporary issues and historic events.

Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920 - (Summary Only) The collection is strong in antebellum Southern music and Confederate and Civil War songs. It also includes minstrel songs, patriotic and political songs, spirituals, dance music, marches, and songs from vaudeville, "Tin pan alley", and WWI.

African-American Sheet Music, 1850-1920: Selected from the Collections of Brown University - (Summary Only)

Now What a Time: Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals,1938-1943 - (Summary Only) This collection consists of approximately one hundred sound recordings, primarily blues and gospel songs, and related documentation from the folk festivals at Fort Valley State College in Fort Valley, Georgia.

Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry - (Summary Only) The 108 sound recordings in this collection document the various kinds of material recorded in the 1890s – band and orchestra, instrumentalists, popular music vocalists, classical and opera.

California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties. Collected by Sidney Robertson Cowell - (Summary and Teaching Resources) This multi-format ethnographic collection contains more than 35 hours of recorded folk music.

Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip - (Summary and Teaching Resources) This collection features 25 hours of folk music from more than 300 performers.

Leonard Bernstein Collection, ca. 1920-1989, The - (Summary Only) Over 400,000 items including music and literary manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, audio and video recordings, fan mail, and other types of materials document Bernstein

Band Music from the Civil War Era - (Summary Only) This collection features over 700 examples of brass band music popular during the Civil War period.

Aaron Copland Collection, ca. 1900-1990, The - (Summary Only) This collection features music sketches, correspondence, photographs and diaries that document Copland

An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Manual, ca. 1490-1920" - (Summary and Teaching Resources) Explore over two hundred dance manuals from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Irving Fine Collection: ca. 1914-1962, The - (Summary Only)

Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection - (Summary Only) This collection contains images of flutes and other materials donated to the Library of Congress by noted scientist Dayton Miller.

Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections, 1937-1942 - (Summary and Teaching Resources) This collection documents the music, history and culture of Florida and includes access to 376 sound recordings.

Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection - (Summary Only)

Woody Guthrie and the Archive of American Folk Song: Correspondence, 1940-1950 - (Summary and Teaching Resources) This collection contains correspondence from Woody Guthrie written while he lived in New York and also essays and illustrations relating to his life and activities.

Hispano Music and Culture from the Northern Rio Grande: The Juan B. Rael Collection - (Summary Only) This collection documents 1940s religious and secular music of Spanish-speaking residents of rural Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado.

We'll Sing to Abe Our Song Sheet Music about Lincoln, Emancipation, and the Civil War, from the Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana - (Summary and Teaching Resources) This collection includes more than two hundred sheet music compositions about Lincoln and the Civil War as recorded in popular music.

Omaha Indian Music - (Summary Only) This collection features a hundred years of traditional Omaha music ranging from 1890s wax cylinders to 1980s powwows, speeches and interviews.

Creative Americans: Portraits by Carl Van Vechten, 1932-1964 - (Summary and Teaching Resources) Explore this collection for images of choreographers, composers, conductors, dancers, musicians and singers.

Moldenhauer Archives - The Rosaleen Moldenhauer Memorial - (Summary Only) This collection contains approximately 3,500 items documenting the history of Western music from the medieval period through the modern era.

Captain Pearl R. Nye: Life on the Ohio and Erie Canal - (This collection contains captures the culture and music of the men, women, and children who worked and lived along the Ohio and Erie Canal.)

William P. Gottlieb: Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz - (Sumary and Teaching Resources) Explore more than 1600 photographs of celebrated jazz artists taken in New York City and Washington, D.C. from 1938-1948.

These terms may be useful when searching for items related to this theme in the American Memory collections.