The inaugural online presentation of the Aaron Copland Collection at the Library of Congress celebrates the centennial of the birth of the American composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990). The multiformat Aaron Copland Collection from which the online collection derives spans the years 1910 to 1990 and includes approximately 400,000 items documenting the multifaceted life of an extraordinary person who was composer, performer, teacher, writer, conductor, commentator, and administrator. It comprises both manuscript and printed music, personal and business correspondence, diaries, writings, scrapbooks, programs, newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs, awards, books, sound recordings, and motion pictures.

The first release of the online collection contains approximately 1,000 items that yield a total of about 5,000 images. These items date from 1899 to 1981, with most from the 1920s through the 1950s, and were selected from Copland's music sketches, correspondence, writings, and photographs.

This module represents suggestions regarding proper breathing for singers. Several exercises are given to us with beginning students and choirs to assist them.

This module represents information regarding the selection of a pianist to accompany a soloist in a contest. The capability of the pianist to play the music well and to be able to rehearse with the soloist is inherently important but necessary to state. The soloist's confidence during a performance can be disastrously affected by a poor accompanist.

For adults, a short review of the physics underlying music theory.

An explanation of how to add various types of multimedia objects to your Connexions content. Examples of some of the more common multimedia objects are included.

Advanced Music Theory: Lesson One on Secondary Dominants. First in a series of two Advanced Music Theory lessons. Lesson One: Secondary Dominants, Lesson Two: Church Modes.

Jazz grew out of the African-American community at the turn of the 20th century, a time when blacks were being denied their most basic rights. The music has since become a part of every American's birthright, a timeless symbol of American individualism and ingenuity, American democracy and inclusiveness. In this lesson students will learn about the social, cultural, and economic origins of jazz within the African-American community.

Children listen to several jingles recorded from television or radio and comment on them in terms of given criteria.

After listening to recorded jingles from TV or radio, children are given a specific product to advertise and must compose their own jingles in groups.

This collection consists of 1,305 pieces of African-American sheet music dating from 1850 through 1920. The collection includes many songs from the heyday of antebellum black face minstrelsy in the 1850s and from the abolitionist movement of the same period. Numerous titles are associated with the novel and the play Uncle Tom's Cabin. Civil War period music includes songs about African-American soldiers and the plight of the newly emancipated slave. Post-Civil War music reflects the problems of Reconstruction and the beginnings of urbanization and the northern migration of African Americans. African-American popular composers include James Bland, Ernest Hogan, Bob Cole, James Reese Europe, and Will Marion Cook. Twentieth century titles feature many photographs of African-American musical performers, often in costume. Unlike many other sorts of published works, sheet music can be produced rapidly in response to an event or public interest, and thus is a source of relatively unmediated and unrevised perspectives on quickly changing events and public attitudes. Particularly significant in this collection are the visual depictions of African Americans which provide much information about racial attitudes over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

As part of the Say Brother theater piece entitled 'Theatre in Reverse', Al Jarreau performs You Don't See Me, live in the studio.

'Dealin'' with African drummer Babatunde Olatunji. Program consists of numerous segments related to African heritage, the first of which is an excerpt from a filmstrip on the fall of the Songhay Empire in West Africa by the Afro Audiovisual Company of Boston. Additional segments include 'Bookbeat,' a 'Spotlight' stage performance by actress Beah Richards, 'Dealin'' with African drummer Babatunde Olatunji, 'Information' on traveling to Africa, and 'Commentary' by Sarah-Ann Shaw on the lack of African history lessons in the American classroom. Produced by Marita Rivero. Directed by Conrad White.

Students will move like the animal they hear described in the music.

Al Jarreau performs 'You Don't See Me'Program focuses on three different African American theater productions. Host Barbara Barrow introduces the topic of Black theater and stage works Raisin (the Tony-Award-winning musical for 1974), The Black Dyad (about Black male and female relationships) and 'Theatre in Reverse,' a Say Brother theater piece with an in-studio vocal performance by Al Jarreau with dance performances (with the intent of drawing the audience's attention to sound and light, rather than to the performers). Program contains excerpts from each production, and an in-studio discussion with writers/directors Evelyn and Melvin Moore about the excerpt 'The Date' from The Black Dyad, which was the only segment of the three aired on the program. Produced by Marita Muhammad Rivero. Directed by Conrad White.

This class examines the ways humans experience the realm of sound and how perceptions and technologies of sound emerge from cultural, economic, and historical worlds. In addition to learning about how environmental, linguistic, and musical sounds are construed cross-culturally, students learn about the rise of telephony, architectural acoustics, and sound recording, as well as about the globalized travel of these technologies. Questions of ownership, property, authorship, and copyright in the age of digital file sharing are also addressed. A major concern will be with how the sound/noise boundary has been imagined, created, and modeled across diverse sociocultural and scientific contexts. Auditory examples--sound art, environmental recordings, music--will be provided and invited throughout the term.

This module demonstrates the study of a choral score for the purposes of rehearsal and finally performance. Attention is given to specific characteristics of the music and to problems that will occur in rehearsal. It also demonstrates an approach that may be used with other music.

This site consists of tens of thousands of pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the post-Civil War era. Included are popular songs, piano music, sacred music and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra. This first release of the online collection consists of over 22,000 musical compositions registered for copyright during the years 1870 to 1879.

'As if Memories Could Deceive Me,' 1986, documents a performance or rehearsal of the New England Conservatory Symphony Orchestra, through close-ups, split-screen effects, and collage techniques. Instruments are filmed close-up and appear in boxed-off portions of the screen. As the music rises, archival film images begin to creep in. Many times they are superimposed over the instruments. Film footage includes the interior of a colorful palace, Hitler propaganda and Nuremberg trials, and a men's clothing store. The original footage produced for this work was shot at the New England Conservatory of Music, the Goethe Institute, and a Louis clothing store. Robert Schumann's 'Manfred' and 'Drum and Gong Sounds' by F. Marschall and U. Timmermann are the musical works performed by New England Conservatory Symphony Orchestra. 'As if Memories Could Deceive Me' was created by Marcel Odenbach for The Contemporary Art Television (CAT) Fund and was co-produced by the Goethe Institute in Boston. It was later broadcast as a segment of Episode 304 of the 1987 season of 'New Television.'

In this lesson, students are introduced to audio engineers. They discover in what type of an environment audio engineers work and exactly what they do on a day-to-day basis. Students come to realize that audio engineers help produce their favorite music and movies.