Happy New Year

The Music Division wishes you a happy New Year’s Eve.  If you find your midnight kiss watched over by the winking satellite pictured in “Under the Midnight Moon,” from the Historic Sheet Music Collection, 1800-1922 in the Performing Arts Encylcopedia –  please, call a cab.

Celebrate New Year’s Day with the Bernsteins with this holiday greeting card from the Leonard Bernstein Collection.

Finally, as you ring in the New Year, take a look back at the year that was. Pianist and critic Charles T. Downey, on the Washington area arts blog Ionarts, named the performance of the Arcanto Quartet at the Coolidge Auditorium one of the best live performances of the year. What were some of your memorable musical experiences of 2010?

May your New Year be filled with music!

Shepherding Students from Rice University

Earlier this month, the Music Division welcomed five graduate students from The Shepherd School of Music at Rice University for a week-long research experience as they scoured through our collections in hopes of developing a new concert program based on materials only available at the Library of Congress. Tracy Wu (violin), Clara Yang (cello), Makiko …

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Jingle Bells

The first time I read Edgar Allan Poe’s 1845 poem “The Bells,” I thought it was unusually upbeat for a work by the master of the macabre. But upon further reading, those clamorous consonants, that constant clanging, the “time, time, time,” and “tinkle, tinkle, tinkle” are entirely in line with the likes of “The Telltale …

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The Gift that Keeps on Giving

The following is a guest post by Senior Music Specialist Mark Horowitz. As it’s the holiday season, it seems appropriate to express thanks for a series of extraordinary opportunities that the Music Division has afforded me…and to celebrate some of the other good things they lead to. It mostly started in 1996 with a grant …

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MacDowell Reconsidered

The following is a guest post by Senior Music Specialist Robin Rausch. The weekend of December 3-5, I participated in a MacDowell Festival & Symposium at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, to commemorate the 150th birthday (on December 18th) of the distinguished American composer Edward MacDowell.   MacDowell is generally acknowledged to be the first American …

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Happy Birthday to Us!

One year ago today, In the Muse launched with Meet the Music Division, a post that interviewed several staff members about their personal experience with Beatlemania.  Since then, we’ve brought you news of Music Division events, including our world-renowned concert programs. We’ve highlighted a wide variety of treasures from the collection – from old maestros like Bach …

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Want to hear Radiohead played on a Stradivarius?

The Sybarite5 will bring their eclectic repertoire, which features works by Dvořák,  Mozart, Astor Piazolla and Radiohead, to the Coolidge Auditorium Saturday night, December 18th. The group will be performing on Stradivarius instruments from the Music Division’s priceless collection. Advanced tickets are no longer available, but patrons are encouraged to try for stand-by tickets starting at …

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