Today we remember Richard Rodgers and his incredible contribution to musical theater and popular song on what would be his 110th birthday! Rodgers (1902-1979) wrote more than 900 songs and composed for 43 musicals and left an immeasurable impact on the American songbook, influencing arts from the worlds of pop, classical, jazz, and beyond. Rodgers’ …
The Music Division regularly offers new and updated online finding aids to help guide the intrepid researcher through its vast collections. You can see an index of all the Music Division’s finding aids here. This month’s new additions include a guide to the papers of Edward Jablonski, author of Irving Berlin: American Troubadour and other composer biographies, as …
The following is a guest post by Dance Heritage Coalition Fellow Nicole Topich. Processing the Marge Champion Collection in the Music Division has been one of the most exciting archives jobs I have held. The collection is not very large, but almost every item I found was interesting or historically significant. Because the collection has …
The children’s prayer that begins, ”Now I lay me down to sleep” dates back to an 18th century New England primer, but its musical life has followed a surprising path over the more than two centuries since. From heavy metal (Metallica) to hip-hop (The Notorious B.I.G.) to indie rock (Liz Phair), the iconic words have …
The following is a guest post by Senior Music Cataloger Sharon McKinley. The Library of Congress Chorale’s Spring concert is this Thursday, June 7. Cinema in Concert will be presented at noon in the JeffersonBuilding, Coolidge Auditorium. It is free to staff and the public, so if you’re in the neighborhood, stop on by! It’s …
Seeing a new Wes Anderson movie is like getting a new mix tape. The soundtracks to his films blend original scores — often by Devo frontman Mark Mothersbaugh — with pop music that summons an air of fragile nostalgia: Nick Drake, Nico, middle-period Kinks, French yeh-yeh music. Classical music also plays a part in his …
On Saturday, June 9th, the Girl Scouts of the Nation’s Capitol will host a song fest on the National Mall. With 200,000 girls and adults expected, this will not be an ordinary songfest by any stretch of the imagination. Rock the Mall , as the event is called, is a birthday celebration on behalf of …
The 2011 National Recording Registry selections were announced this morning, and as always the titles are great fodder for an eclectic, historically important, culturally influential mix-tape. Among the titles is one of my very favorite albums, Love’s Forever Changes, a relic of 1967 whose lush string arrangements, rich melodies, and alternately pastoral and visionary lyrics make …
The following is a guest post by Sharon McKinley, Senior Music Cataloger. Old sheet music can be brittle. The pages are often dissected and bound into volumes by previous owners. Sometimes a piece is simply missing pages. With all that, do you ever wonder how Library of Congress catalogers can identify a piece? I did …
As seen from the Earth, the planet Venus will move across the face of the sun on June 5, 2012. This week’s featured sheet music celebrates this rare orbit with John Philip Sousa’s commemorative march, part of a Transit of Venus presentation created in the Performing Arts Encyclopedia with the help of NASA scientist Sten …