LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
101 Independence Avenue SE
Washington, DC   20540
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Fax:  (202) 707-9199


March 14, 2011

Press contact: Erin Allen (202) 707-7302, eral@loc.gov

Library of Congress Launches Music Consortium Website

Participants Include Juilliard, the British Library, New York Public Library

The Library of Congress has launched a Music Consortium Treasures website that gives online access to some of the world's most valued music manuscript and print materials from six esteemed institutions at www.loc.gov/musictreasures/.

The aim of the site is to further music scholarship and research by providing access in one place to digital images of primary sources for performance and study of music.

The Music Treasures Consortium website is the creation of the music libraries and archives in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Joining the Library are The Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace Library, the British Library, the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library at Harvard University, the Morgan Library and Museum and the New York Public Library.

Items digitized include manuscript scores and first and early editions of a work. Seminal composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Richard Wagner, Claude Debussy, Georges Bizet, Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky, among others, are represented on the site through their original handwritten manuscripts and first editions. The online items range from the 16th century to the 20th century in this initial launch.

Researchers can search or browse materials, access bibliographic information about each item and view digital images of the treasure via each custodial archive's website. The site will continue to grow as consortium members add more items.

The Library’s unparalleled music holdings include manuscripts, scores, sound recordings, books, libretti, music-related periodicals and microforms, copyright deposits and musical instruments. Manuscripts of note include those of European masters such as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms and those of American masters such as Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein and Charles Mingus. The Alan Lomax collection of field recordings of American roots music, Woody Guthrie’s original recordings and manuscripts, and one-of-a-kind recordings of bluesman Robert Johnson from the 1930s are also among the Library’s musical treasures.

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution. It seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs and exhibitions. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its website at www.loc.gov and via interactive exhibitions on a personalized website at myloc.gov.

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PR 11-048
3/14/11
ISSN 0731-3527