The Music Library invites you to browse our reference collection. Note the following new additions, listed in no particular order:
John Carter's ABC for book collectors, 9th edition (2016)
Catalogo del fondo musicale del Seminario patriarcale di Venezia / Franco Rossi.
A dictionary for the modern percussionist and drummer / James A. Strain.
The Jenny Lind paper doll set is a somewhat unusual and most charming recent acquisition by the Stanford Libraries. The doll, measuring just 10 cm in height, comes with costumes from eight of Lind’s notable opera roles, a “concert-toilette” (recital) gown, and five hair pieces. The chromolithographed opera costumes may reference actual outfits worn by Lind, or, more likely, originate from the designer’s imagination. We do know that the designer took liberties with the doll’s hair color—Lind was decidedly a brunette.
We're happy to report that Vincent Kang has joined the Music Library team as our new Operations Manager. Vincent brings excellent experience in public services, having served as Library Supervisor at Doe Memorial and Moffitt libraries at UC Berkeley, where, among other duties, he oversaw a student work force of 60, covering three service points.
The Music Library is the recipient of a magnificent collection of classical music compact discs donated by Dr. David R. Kessler. The collection consists of 7,701 titles on 9,546 discs resulting from Dr. Kessler’s lifelong love and involvement with music. He began listening to classical music on the radio in New York in his early teens, where he listened to music several hours daily and took notes on what he heard. He also began seriously studying the piano.
The Stanford University Libraries received a collection of documents and manuscripts from the conductor, pianist, composer, and music editor, Jacques-Louis Monod. He was born at Asnières-sur-Seine, France on 25 February 1927 and, as a child prodigy, began his education at the Paris Conservatory in 1935. He studied composition principally with René Leibowitz, who was a major influence on his work, and also with composers Olivier Messiaen, Bernard Wagenaar, Boris Blacher, and Josef Rufer.
The Stanford Libraries have started a subscription to Met Opera on Demand, which streams more than 600 full-length Metropolitan Opera performances, including more than 100 high-definition videos known from their showings at movie theaters, classic telecasts originally broadcast live on tv from 1977-2003, radio broadcasts (audio only) of performances going back to 1935 from the Saturday matinee radio broadcasts, and more recent satellite radio broadcasts.
Some of the significant acquisitions in music acquired last year are highlighted here. A more complete list may be found on the Music Library’s web page. We are grateful to our endowed fund donors whose contributions made most of these purchases possible.
Expositions and world fairs were responsible for creating a lot of popular music, as the collection recently added shows. The sheet music provides a fascinating view of these events, from the colorful cover art, to the stories and descriptions contained in the lyrics. The 1893 Chicago, 1904 St. Louis, and 1915 and 1939 San Francisco fairs are especially well represented. The collection includes more than 20 songs from the 1915 Panama-Pacific Fair held in San Francisco. Some of them are Romanoff Caviar, Meet Me in Frisco and We’ll Go to the Fair, That’s How They Spent Their Honeymoon, 1915 Rag, Frisco You’re a Bear. The earliest example in the collection is The Exhibition Quadrille, its cover shows a lithograph of the Crystal Palace of the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London.