Music Library News

Farewell to Mark Zelesky

The Music Library says goodbye to Mark Zelesky as he leaves to begin studies this fall at Louisiana State University toward a Master of Library and Information Science. Mark's last day at Northwestern will be July 18.

Mark has served as Listening Center Assistant since 2006, but he also worked at the Music Library from 2000 to 2005 during his undergraduate studies at Northwestern. Mark has contributed to the Music Library in a variety of ways, and all his great work is appreciated. We wish Mark well at LSU and in his future career.

New Interface for Grove Music Online

Oxford University Press, publisher of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, recently unveiled a new interface for Grove Music Online. As before, this new site, Oxford Music Online, provides online access to the entire content of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd ed., 2001), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (1992), and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (2nd ed., 2001). Additionally, The Oxford Dictionary of Music and The Oxford Companion to Music are also included.

For additional information on how to make the best use of this new interface, see the tip sheet on the Oxford Music Online website.

Beatlemania Takes to the Airwaves

On the heels of the Chicago Tribune's story about our Beatles manuscripts, the Music Library has attracted the attention of two radio stations. On March 26, Bob Sirott, host of WGN Radio's "Noon Show," spoke with Music Library head D.J. Hoek about the Library's exhibit of Beatles materials, and today's "Eight Forty-Eight" program on Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ) also included a segment about the Beatles manuscripts.

The WGN broadcast is not available online, but the "Eight Forty-Eight" segment can be heard on the WBEZ website.

Saariaho Wins Nemmers Prize

As recently announced by the School of Music, Kaija Saariaho is the 2008 winner of the Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition. The selection committee for the award, as reported in the School of Music's press release, noted Saariaho's achievements in "transforming avant-garde techniques into a world of luminous, shifting color and emotional depth, mirroring the human experience." Saariaho's music is well represented in the Music Library, where a wide range of scores and sound recordings is available. A quick "Author" search for Saariaho in NUcat will provide a wealth of materials to explore. Also, Naxos Music Library offers online access to recordings of a number of Saariaho's works.

Beatles in Chicago Tribune and on Exhibit

Continuing the press coverage that the Music Library's Beatles manuscripts have been getting recently, the March 23 Chicago Tribune features a full-page story about these unique artifacts. The article focuses particularly on the "For No One" manuscript that shows lyrics Paul McCartney decided not to include in the finished version of the song. The full story can be read at the Tribune's website.

An exhibit of high-resolution reproductions of all our Beatles manuscripts is now open to the public through April 18. Located near the entrance to the Main Library, 1970 Campus Drive, the exhibit can be viewed 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8:30 a.m. to noon Saturday. For more information, contact the library at 847-467-5918.

2008 MLA Conference

Two of the Music Library's staff members recently attended the Music Library Association's 2008 Annual Conference in Newport, Rhode Island. Held in the home of the Newport Jazz Festival, this year's conference featured a number of sessions on jazz but also covered a wide array of topics in collection development, cataloging, and technology. Morris Levy, Senior Music Cataloger, attended MLA as well as the Music OCLC Users Group annual pre-conference meeting. D.J. Hoek, Head of the Music Library, served as Program Chair for this year's MLA conference and attended meetings of various committees he is a member of, including the Personnel Subcommittee, the Publications Committee, the Dena Epstein Award Committee, and the 2009 Program Committee.

New Finding Aid for Notations Collection

The Music Library's collection of music manuscripts and correspondence relating to John Cage's Notations Project have recently been processed and cataloged in detail to provide improved access to one of our largest and most important archival collections. This collection of 463 manuscripts by 274 composers was brought together by John Cage in the mid 1960s for a project to document the wide range of musical notation being used by composers of that time. After Cage published reproductions of many of the manuscripts in his book Notations (Something Else Press, 1969), the collection was acquired by the Music Library in the early 1970s. Along with all of the original manuscripts that Cage brought together, the collection also includes letters to Cage by many of the composers who contributed to the project.

This new finding aid reflects the Music Library's ongoing efforts to improve access to its archival holdings. With the Notations finding aid completed, we are now at work cataloging the great body of additional correspondence that is part of the John Cage Collection.

See the Music Library's website to view the Notations finding aid, as well as additional information about the John Cage Collection.

Special thanks to Music Library staff members Jennifer Ward and Ruth Young for their work on the Notations finding aid and their continuing work processing our Cage materials.