Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue

Additional Resources

• 📖 George and Ira Gershwin Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress
  • The George and Ira Gershwin Collection contains music manuscripts, handwritten and typewritten lyric sheets, printed music, correspondence, photographs, programs and publicity materials, legal and financial documents, and thirty-one scrapbooks, which present nearly a complete record of the Gershwins‘ lives and work as they were chronicled in the contemporary press. The centerpiece of the George and Ira Gershwin collection is the music material, which spans their entire careers and primarily relates to their stage and screen musicals but includes George’s concert works as well. The music material includes music manuscripts, many in George’s hand or in the hand of orchestrators, arrangers, or copyists; handwritten and typewritten lyric sheets; musical sketchbooks; and printed music. 
• 👂 The 1924 recording of Rhapsody in Blue featured George Gerswhin at the piano with Paul Whiteman and His Concert Orchestra. It can be heard through the  Library of Congress National Jukebox and the Discography of American Historical Recordings.
• 📖 African-American Banjo Music Banjo Research Guide
  • This guide provides information on discovering materials at the Library of Congress–primarily in the American Folklife Center–about African Americans who play the banjo. Recordings made in Appalachia, the Deep South, Mississippi Delta, and other regions provide documentation of this uniquely African-American instrument.
• 🏛️ Alan Lomax CBS Radio Series collection (AFC 1939/002), Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
  • The American Folklife Center holds documentation for 339 radio programs created by Alan Lomax as a writer and broadcaster for CBS, BBC, Armed Forces, Mutual, and NBC networks, from 1939-1969.The American School of the Air was a mainstay of CBS educational broadcasting during the 1940s. American Folklife Center collections contain manuscript and audio documentation of two Lomax American School of the Air series: Folk Music of America (forty-nine programs broadcast from October 1939 to April 1940) and Wellsprings of Music (twenty-four programs broadcast from October 1940 to April 1941).
  • The collection includes documentation related to the programs from February and April 1940, which featured three of Florence Price’s compositional contemporaries—William Grant Still, William Levi Dawson, and R. Nathaniel Dett—each of whom infused “folk” idioms into otherwise classical constructs.
• 👀 Alan Lomax collection (AFC 2004/004), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.
  • Notes, correspondence, documentation, and project files related to Alan Lomax’s work Jelly Roll Morton.
• 👂 Jelly Roll Morton Collection, 1938 (AFC 1938/001), Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. 
  • Interviews and musical performances of Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton recorded by Alan Lomax at the Library of Congress, 1938. Morton recounts his experiences, both in New Orleans and on the road, as a popular musician of the early twentieth century. These interviews were the basis for Alan Lomax’s biography: Mister Jelly Roll: the fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and “inventor of jazz,” (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1950). Related manuscripts in the collection include correspondence, indexes, partial transcripts, notes, and drafts of DownBeat articles from 1937-1938.  

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6

The Pastoral Symphony

Additional Resources

• 📖 Beethoven: A Guide to Primary and Secondary Resources
  • This guide provides information on discovering materials at the Library of Congress–primarily in the Music Division–about Ludwig van Beethoven. These materials include music manuscripts, facsimiles, first and early editions of music scores, critical editions, scholarly literature on Beethoven, correspondence, special collections, and iconography. 
• 👂 Database of Field Recordings – Traditional Music and Spoken Word Catalog
  • This searchable database provides bibliographic information on approximately 34,000 ethnographic sound recordings. Most were recorded between 1933 and 1950.   
• 📖 Beethoven-Haus Bonn Beethoven-Archiv
  • The Beethoven-Haus Bonn association, founded in 1889, is the leading Beethoven centre. It strives to preserve Beethoven’s work and heritage. The Beethoven-Haus houses the world’s most significant Beethoven collection, a museum at Beethoven’s birthplace that attracts over 100,000 visitors each year, a musicology research department with its own library and publishing house as well as a chamber music hall named after Hermann J. Abs where numerous events take place throughout the year. 
  • The Beethoven-Archiv was founded in 1927 as research center on Beethoven and his compositions, his intellectual and cultural background, and the history of his influence. It collects the scattered records in original form or as photographic reproductions, pursues extensive research and edition projects and also provides advice on external projects. 
• 📖 Beethoven-Haus Bonn Library
  • The library of the Beethoven-Haus is a scientific library and music library serving special purposes related to Ludwig van Beethoven’s biography, oeuvre and impact. The library owns more than 80,000 items (sheet music, books, essays, articles, magazines, audio and audiovisual media). Reproductions of manuscripts from other libraries (more than 6,000 photographs and microfilms) as well as the original proprietary collections of the Beethoven-Haus (about 10,000 autographs, pictures and images, instruments, objects and files) complement the library’s inventory. 
• 👀 Terry Eiler, photographer. Morning mist rising from the coves. Coal River Folklife Project collection (AFC 1999/008), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.
• 👀 Elaine Thatcher, photographer. Yardscape of Nello Benedetti; Walk through Carl Liepe’s land, New Jersey.Pinelands Folklife Project collection (AFC 1991/023), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.  
• 👀 Michael Edward Bell, photographer. Woonasquatucket Reservoir (landscapes); Burrillville Arts & Craft Festival, Burrillville, Rhode Island. Rhode Island Folklife Project collection (AFC 1991/022), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.