Things to Check Out--The "Is it Musical Theater or Musical Theatre?" edition

Greetings!

This edition of Stuff to Check Out is mostly for the Musical Theater majors, but really for anyone who likes musicals.

We have some shiny new goodies for you. Our fearless leader, Tracey, has heard from the music theater faculty that we were missing a lot of material you need. To correct this, there has been a steady stream of compact discs, librettos and vocal scores for new (or newish) musicals flowing through the back room. We have Spamalot; Light in the Piazza; The Producers; Wicked; Legally Blonde; Jersey Boys; Spring Awakening; Thoroughly Modern Millie; In the Heights; Next to Normal; Avenue Q; Caroline, or Change; Hairspray; Billy Elliot; The Wedding Singer and The Wild Party. I'm probably missing some, but you get the idea.

Your best bet for finding musicals is to search the catalog for the item(s) you want. (If you need help, ask at the desk, that's why we're here.) The vocal scores (piano/vocal sheet music) for these will be housed in Closed Stacks because there has been a history here of theft and vandalism (i.e. people tearing out pages instead of checking out scores or photocopying portions they need). You'll still be able to check them out, but you'll need someone to retrieve them and check them out to you like we do for reserves and CDs. The libretti (texts/librettos/whatever you'd prefer to call them) are housed with the opera libretti in the ML50's. These you can browse by yourself. And the compact discs are behind the desk, as always.

So, come on in and see us. All the world may be a stage, but we're a music library, so that's pretty cool too.

Things to Check Out--The Music Ed. edition

Hello once more from the back room.

Just a short post today, as I was not a music education major (I've never been good with kids) and thus do not have a lot to say on the subject. I do, however, want to highlight what I'm told are some pretty sweet books on Music Education that we've just made available to you.

We have just obtained several volumes in the Teaching Music Through Performance In... series. We have multiple volumes and some recordings for the Teaching Music Through Performance in Band set, as well as select volumes for Teaching Music Through Performance in Beginning Band, Teaching Music Through Performance in Choir and Teaching Music Through Performance in Jazz. So there we are, something for everyone, at least everyone who happens to be a Music Education major.

To find the books, you can type the phrase Teaching Music Through Performance into our catalog to see the whole series or go directly to the following areas:

Band: MT733 T43
Beginning Band:MT733 T433 (note the subtle difference in numbers)
Choir: MT875 T43
Jazz: MT733.7 T43 (again, note the subtle difference in numbers from the band and beginning band volumes)

Up next: Musical Theater majors, boy do we have some fun for you!

Allen Library's First Video Tutorial

We are always looking for new ways to help you find information, and today marks our first foray into video tutorials. Instead of just writing down instructions and adding in some screenshots, these video tutorials (okay, there's only one right now) actually show you the whole process and explain what is happening. Make sure you have your speakers on so you can hear the explanation. The first video tutorial is a quick one-minute presentation on how to find books in our catalog. I'll probably be adding some more complex ones, but this one should be a good start. You can find it here: http://library.hartford.edu/allenlibrary/findbook_video.asp. Please let me know what you think about it and feel free to send some suggestions as to what tutorials you would like to see in the future!

Things to check out: The Henry Brant and fun with facsimiles edition.

Greetings once again from the back room of the Allen Library.

This week's main obsession is the new (to us, at least) orchestration book by the late Henry Brant*. If you're unfamiliar with his work, do at least check out his orchestration of Ives' Concord Sonata.* It's worth a listen. One of Brant's strengths as a composer was definitely his command of orchestration, and it shows in this book, published posthumously in 2009. Brant had an interest in spatial groupings of instruments as well as standard orchestration. What makes this book unique is that instead of simply showing you ranges and fingerings like some orchestration books, it focuses on creating textures and combining timbres for effect. He also discusses the particular sonorities of specific instruments and what is unique about them, and how to use them to their best advantage. The focus is on combinations of instruments and how to make them work together in interesting ways.

There's an interesting chapter on the Piano as an orchestral instrument, which is something many composers seem unable to use to full effect. There are also multiple chapters on writing for different types of percussion instruments. But what stands out most is that this is a true guide for the orchestrator, discussing all aspects of the craft in methodical detail, including how to make orchestration decisions. You can check out more of Brant's work on DRAM *and Naxos* as well as in the library.

Another fun book that came in to the library this week was received as a gift from a kind patron. Heinrich Schutz to Henry Miller is technically an exhibition catalog for the 2001 exhibition of the Frederick R. Koch Collection, currently housed at Yale University, but we have classed it with the manuscript facsimiles, as it contains examples of many composers' manuscripts. In it you can see the remarkably elegant scores of Maurice Ravel and Jean Sibelius, the artfully crossed-out section of Faure's op. 37, the Nocturne in B-flat major, and, perhaps most surprisingly, a lovely pencil-sketched landscape by Mendelssohn from his tour of Scotland in 1847.

While most of these are only single page examples of the full item, they are interesting examples, and may spark an idea for further musicological research. More images from this collection can be found online at the Beinecke Rare Books Library website.

Well, that's all for now. The next installment of Things to Check Out will focus on some new music education resources we're excited about. More about that when they have all arrived.



*sorry, the Grove Music, Naxos and DRAM links will require you to login to use those resources unless you're on campus. If you're unfamiliar with how to use them, feel free to contact us for help!