This month we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. But did you know that nearly 150 years ago there was an earlier moon landing? In 1865, Jules Verne published his novel De la terre à la lune (From the Earth to the Moon) and ten years later it was used as the basis…
Can You Do the Cancan?
“All the girls in Paris France Love to do the Can Can Dance.”¹ The dance and music is strongly associated with the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. He portrayed the dancers and their dance halls in many of his posters. As a result, people today may associate the cancan with Paris of the 1890s. The cancan…
Illustrated Songbooks, Part II
This post is part of the Illustrated Songbooks series. Songbooks Illustrated by Henriette Willebeek le Mair Little Songs of Long Ago, music by Alfred Moffat Our Old Nursery Rhymes, music by Alfred Moffat Old Dutch Nursery Rhymes, music by Julius Rontgen Henriette Willebeek le Mair was a Dutch illustrator born in 1889. As a teenager, she…
Illustrated Songbooks, Part 1
This post is part of the Illustrated Songbooks series. The second half of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century have been called the “golden age of children’s books." That extends to children’s songbooks, too. These songbooks may have music composed especially for that book, or may be already well-known nursery rhymes or…
Ukuleles Are Hot!
Ukuleles were the “it” instrument in the 1910s and 1920s, and they got another bump of popularity in the late 1940s and 1950s. Ukuleles are hot once again.
Traditional Irish Music
Ireland’s musical tradition goes back well over a thousand years. For nearly all of this time, it’s been an oral tradition passed on from one musician to another. It’s only been fairly recently that the music has been recorded in written and audio forms. The music can be found played in homes, pubs, reception halls…
Women Composers in Turn of the Century Boston
In Arthur Elson’s “Woman’s Work in Music,” he names fifteen women who are in one way associated with Boston. These women were either educated here or wrote much of their music while living here. Of the fifteen, the Boston Public Library holds printed music for ten of these women: Amy Cheney Beach (Mrs. H. H…
Love Songs: Writing and Finding Them
For as long as there has been music, there have probably been love songs. The first love song is lost to the mists of time, and evidence of what ancient love songs sounded like is scant. However, some songwriters left behind lyrics for us to discover today. The most famous of these writers was the…
Silent Night, 200th Anniversary
2018 is the 200th anniversary of the first performance of the popular Christmas carol “Silent Night” (“Stille Nacht”). In 1816, Joseph Mohr wrote a six stanza poem and put it aside, not giving it much thought. But in 1818, when preparing for the Christmas Eve service, this Austrian priest discovered a problem. The church’s organ…
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