Sure, in 10 days it’ll be May, but it’s not like we live on top of the Sclare/Far Fissure like Mankato, Minnesota, where the winter temperature never falls below 70 degrees. No, we have regular Wisconsin weather here. Yesterday our unquenchable thirst for snow and more snow was finally satisfied. We hope.
Author: Antoinette Powell
Star-Spangled Banner
Today is the eightieth anniversary of the designation of The Star-Spangled Banner as the United States national anthem. Read 46 Stat. 1508, codified at 36 U.S.C. § 301, “Conduct during playing” while listening to what we think is the definitive VOCAL rendering of the tune from SCTV. Then, of course, there’s also Jimi Hendrix.
More Digital Scores
By the light of the silvery moon, lyric by Ed. Madden ; music by Gus Edwards. New York : G. Edwards, c1909. From the New York Public Library Digital Library Collection, Performing Arts in America, 1875-1923
We admit it. We’re not Harvard. But we keep our noses pressed up to the Harvard window like little kids in a library candy store, gazing longingly. And when they come up with something this cool we jump on it like a great horny toad on a passel of harvester ants.
Here’s a link to their Online Resources for Music Scholars from which you can search 78 (as of today) databases for digital scores. Pretty much anything in the public domain you can imagine is there, free to legally view, print and download:
- Chopin piano music
- string quartet parts
- opera libretti
- medieval polyphonic music manuscripts
- facsimiles
- sheet music and broadsides, concerning slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and related topics
There are also some audio, video and image files. Jump on it!
Jazz at The Trout
The Trout Museum of Art, 111 W. College Avenue, is hosting Jazz at the Trout, Thursday, February 17 at 7:30 p.m., featuring LU’s own Matt Turner, cello and Bill Carrothers, piano. The Mudd has many CDs of these artists, including all of the Bill Carrothers recordings mentioned in this Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 8th and 9th editions, and 4 CDs featuring them in collaboration:
- To the Moon
- Play Day
- The Voices That Are Gone (The music of Stephen Collins Foster)
- Armistice 1918 (Popular music from the first World War)
Tickets:
FREE for members; $10 non-members; $5 students
920-733-4089 or info@troutmuseum.org
IPA, With a Twist
You say “IPA” to most people around here and they think “India Pale Ale.” Mmmmm. Beer. But singers are different. Their IPA is the International Phonetic Alphabet, that mysterious combination of other-worldly symbols that only singers can decipher. It’s their secret handshake. Now the Mudd has access to IPA Source, a database of phonetic translations of songs and arias. And with 24/7 access on and off campus, sopranos in their kerchiefs and tenors in their jammies can just settle down to O! ne finis jamais.
Think That Elk’s Had Enough?
Some may argue that Tycho Brahe wasn’t such a colorful guy: Danish astronomer (but there were probably many of those), nose cut off in a sword fight and replaced by a silver and gold prosthetic (things happen), possibly poisoned by his assistant (certainly had the means and the opportunity). But did you know he had a clairvoyant dwarf jester and a beer-swilling elk? (either of which would be an excellent name for a rock group)
An article in the November 30th New York Times suggests a feature film may be in order. Read Murder! Intrigue! Astronomers? And, of course, the Mudd has scads of books about Tycho.
Muddini Media Mania
We’re Number Two!!
It’s official: The Seeley G. Mudd Library’s routine in the Wisconsin Library Association’s Book Cart Drill Team competition is the second best in the state! While we will not be going on to Washington D.C. to compete in the nationals, we are pleased as punch to have beaten last year’s winners.
In keeping with the “Reclaim the Magic” theme of the WLA conference, a full third of the Mudd’s staff participated in an extraordinary and physics-defying spectacle of prestidigitation. Amanda Beck, Cindy Patterson, Kate Moody, Antoinette Powell, Colette Lunday Brautigam and Kim Comerford (also known as ACK ACK) donned magician’s garb and wowed the packed house.
Observe the Amazing Muddinis (and their competition) in action on our local newscast.
LU CDs
Today’s CD pile features the many and varied talents of Lawrence University’s students and faculty. We have student and faculty performers, student ensembles, faculty composers, a passel of visiting artists, a visiting composer and a premiere commercial CD. As always, this is the place to be for ALL kinds of music.
At Last: CDs!!
At long last we bring you another batch of CDs new to the library’s collection. Regular readers will recognize the cool flickr® setup whereby one may mouse over a CD and not only find out a little about it, but also link to the CD in our catalog.
Today we have that most excellent percussionist Alison Shaw (who happens to live in Appleton,) some Brazilian jazz and a little Furtwängler for all your Wagner opera excerpt and Brünnhilde immolation needs.