Louisiana State Museum Jazz Collection November 28, 2008

The Louisiana State Museum Jazz Collection is maintained by the Louisiana Digital Library and contains photographs, audio recordings, and musical instruments that pertain to jazz.  The main focus of the collection is New Orleans Jazz.  The photographs and audio recordings are primarily of jazz musicians in New Orleans that traveled throughout the United States.  The musical instruments are those that belonged to these musicians.  The collection is part of a project entitled LaGumbo: A Recipe for Empowerment that is an effort to provide resources to those students K-12.  However, other students can greatly benefit from this collection.

The collection is set up where the user can browse the collection by subject, creator, or title.  The user can click on each group and browse the collection or can search by keyword.  One of the many great items in this collection is a recording of Weatherbird by Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines from 1928.  The recording is a broadcast of the New Orleans Jazz Club Radio Program in 1977.  There are also numerous photographs that are interesting that feature the musicians that are known for making New Orleans Jazz famous.  This is a great resource for anyone interested in Jazz.

The Leonard Bernstein Collection November 28, 2008

The Leonard Bernstein Collection is part of the massive American Memory Collection from the Library of Congress.  The physical collection contains over 400,000 items that amass the greatest variety of any collection from the Library of Congress.  The online portion of this collection contains 85 photographs, 177 scripts from the Young People’s Concerts, 74 scripts from the Thursday Evening Previews, and over 1,100 pieces of correspondence.

The collection of photographs are divided into years based on periods in the composer’s life; the first photograph was taken when he was around 3 years old, and the last was taken three years before he died.  Each photograph has a date and a brief description of the photograph. 

From 1958-72, Bernstein gave a series of lecture-recitals with the purpose of educating children on music and how to become good listeners.  These concerts were known as the Young People’s Concerts.  In the collection, there are 177 scripts that include a handwritten copy and what has been determined as the final script (or close to it). 

The 74 scripts from the Thursday Evening Previews, also include a handwritten copy and a typed copy.  The Thursday Evening Previews was a series that Bernstein began as an informal talk before the concerts of the New York Philharmonic.  These talks were used to inform the audience of the composer’s lives, the composer’s compositional style, and other aspects of the music.

The correspondence that is available online is only a small portion of the 15,500 pieces of correspondence that is available at the Library of Congress physical collection.  The selection of correspondence that is available online was written between 1932-1990 and is mainly correspondence from family members; his piano teacher and assistant, Helen Coates; the composer, Aaron Copland; and conductor, Serge Koussevitzky. 

This collection provides great insight into the life of Leonard Bernstein.  This is an excellent resource for research papers or simply for personal enrichment.  This collection is well-rounded and reminds the visitors that this is a work in progress.  They plan to make everything available online, eventually.  A finding aid is provided to make the user’s research easier.  Also, there is a list of publications by Leonard Bernstein and publications about him.

Piano 300-An Exhibition at the Smithsonian Institute November 28, 2008

Piano 300: Celebrating Three Centuries of People and Pianos was an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute from March 9, 2000 to October 21, 2001.  Although this exhibit is no longer on display, the exhibit information and photos are still available at the Smithsonian website. 

The exhibit was opened in order to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the piano.  Before entering the exhibit, a timeline is given of important dates in the history of the piano, and a music booth is provided with short excerpts of music throughout the years.  Twenty-five pianos were on display; pictures of those pianos are available at the website.  Along with the photos, there is a brief walk through the history associated with each piano.  A list of other resources is also available on the website.

This is an excellent site for piano teachers to use for their piano students.  In addition, this would also be a great site for music appreciation students.  The site gives the history of the piano and provides numerous photos for the visitor to see the evolution of the piano through the years.  I would highly recommend this site to anyone interested in learning more about the piano.

The Mutopia Project November 28, 2008

The Mutopia Project was brought to my attention by Dr. Martens at the beginning of the semester, and I had forgotten about it until recently when I was trying to decide what to blog about. This website offers free sheet music that can be downloaded and printed out for several instruments: Piano, Voice, Guitar, Violin, and Organ, to name a few. As of this writing, they have 1496 pieces of music available.  The site is constantly adding new pieces, and it is open for the public to contribute as well.  They use a software called LilyPond to typeset the music.  This software is designed to make the music easier to read and better to look at.

Overall, I think that this site is a wonderful way to make music available to the public.  For those that are interested in finding a certain piece of music for a one-time occasion, this would be an excellent way to obtain the music in a relatively quick and easy way.  Also, it would be great for piano teachers to direct their students to, if they did not have the money to go out and buy a copy of the music.  The files are available as PDF, so you could save the music on your computer and come back to it at a later date.

However, there are a couple of major drawbacks to a website of this kind.  First of all, the selection is limited.  Since I have a background in piano, the selection of piano music was the one section that I looked at carefully.  The selection does carry a lot of J.S. Bach’s music. However, there were only a couple of pieces available for other composers.  In addition, some pieces did not have the whole piece available.  For instance, there were some sonatas by Beethoven, where only one movement was available and not the other two.  This could become an issue if someone was relying on this site for their music.  Secondly, because several people are contributing to the site, there were differences in the quality of the editions.  Some of the pieces had fingerings, dynamics, and other markings, while some of them had none.  The quality of an edition of music is very important to the performer, so it would not be a site that could be relied on for quality music.  Overall, I think that a site that has free sheet music is perfect for an amateur musician, but for a serious musician that needs quality music, it would not be a good resource.

A Brief Look at Amazon’s Kindle November 17, 2008

Recently, a new gadget has taken the tech world by storm that is known as the Kindle.  This device, which is sold by Amazon is basically a screen with a small keyboard that allows you to read e-books, newspapers, magazines and blogs.  One of the perks of the Kindle is that you can adjust the text size to make it easier to read.  I have heard several people talking about these gadgets, and everything that has been said is positive.

For instance, I was reading Entertainment Weekly’s October 17th issue that had an article about the Kindle.  In the article, Rick Tetzeli tried the Kindle out for two months while he was on numerous business trips.  He began by saying that he had subscribed to the New York Times for years and did not think that he would like it.  After the end of the two months, he has canceled his subscription and now subscribes to the Times on his Kindle.

Another conversation with some of my friends revealed that many of them were receptive to the idea.  However, those with a preference for technology really liked the Kindle and preferred it to the real deal, while friends that read voraciously did not like the idea of the Kindle.

My thoughts on the matter are that no matter how good the technology is, it still cannot replace a real book or newspaper.  It is a great resource for those that want the convenience of having everything in one spot or for traveling purposes, but it will never replace a good book.