Pic(s) of the Week: Bernstein Birthday Edition

Bernstein ca. 1921 with parents, Samuel and Jennie. Photographer unidentified. Leonard Bernstein Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress.

Tomorrow, August 25, marks American composer, conductor, and educator Leonard Bernstein’s birthday (he would be 94 years old!). Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) was without a doubt one of the most significant and influential musical figures in American history. The Music Division is incredibly fortunate to hold the Leonard Bernstein Collection. One of the most heavily used collections in the Performing Arts Reading Room, Bernstein’s papers include his music manuscripts, correspondence, business papers, writings, scrapbooks, and photographs.

Today I would like to highlight the photography to be found within the collection (a whopping 17,439 photographs to be exact!). These photographs not only document Bernstein’s career but also his friendships and family life. About 100 of these photographs are digitized and available in the Library’s Performing Arts Encyclopedia. You’ll find, for example, photographs of a 27 year-old Bernstein conducting the New York City Symphony, Bernstein with his mentor and friend Aaron Copland, Bernstein’s wedding to his wife Felicia, and Bernstein with his daughter Jamie.

Today’s Pic of the Week features a 3 year-old Bernstein photographed with his parents, Samuel and Jennie Bernstein of Lawrence, Massachusetts. Here we catch a glimpse of Bernstein before his life-long musical journey commences (it would be another decade until his first piano recital). If you are intrigued and want to see more digitized materials from the Bernstein Collection, be sure to browse our online collection.

Pic of the Week: Proud as a Peacock Edition

The following post is by Music Cataloging intern Ruth Bright. While cataloging as an intern in the Music Division, I ran across this beautifully illustrated lithograph title page for a song tucked away inside an anonymous volume, one of approximately 290 volumes found at LC classification number M1.A15.  This volume of miscellaneous melodies contains many …

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Pic of the Week: Calling all Choreographers Edition

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 …

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Pic of the Week: Critical Edition

When I prepared the  Martha Graham Collection for digitization some years ago, I looked at hundreds of clippings that the legendary choreography kept in her detailed scrapbooks. Something struck me about the dance reviews. Regular columns by certain music critics were accompanied by a thumbnail photo of the author. In the scrapbook pages of the Graham …

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Pic of the Week: “That’s my Daddy!” Edition

The following is a guest post by Stephen Winick, American Folklife Center. Staff members from the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center (AFC) have identified a one-minute-long segment of silent color footage as film of David “Honeyboy” Edwards, shot by Alan Lomax for the Music Division in 1942. Although the meeting between Edwards and Lomax …

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(Motion) Pic of the Week: Country Music Edition

People sometimes ask if Library of Congress programs are available to view online. Copyright and other issues prevent us from making everything available online, but highlights from the Music Division’s great concert and lecture season are available on the Library’s webcasts page, including the lecture “Bernstein meets Broadway,” the late Jack Gottlieb’s revealing talk “Working …

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Pic of the Week: Carolina Chocolate Drops Edition

The following is a guest post by Stephen Winick, Writer and Editor, American Folklife Center. On Saturday, February 18, 2012, the Library’s Coolidge auditorium hosted a relaxed and thoroughly enjoyable concert by Grammy-Award-winning old-time folk music group The Carolina Chocolate Drops.  The two-hour concert featured old-fashioned music on guitar, banjo, steel-resonator mandolin, and fiddle, with …

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Pic of the Week: Politics and the Dancing Body Edition

The Music Division is proud to announce a new exhibition in the lobby of the Performing Arts Reading Room.  Choreographers have long used the medium of dance to express America’s cultural diversity.  Politics and the Dancing Body also explores the way choreographers employ the body as a tool in the fight against injustice.  The exhibit …

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