Music Online

Going to AMS? Join us for breakfast

Patrick Cole — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:00:00 -0500

If you're heading to Philadelphia next week for the American Musicological Association Annual Meeting, we'd love for you to join us for breakfast on Saturday, November 14th.

Each year Alexander Street treats AMS members to a delicious, hot breakfast while displaying the newest tools, features, and online collections in our music portfolio. This year, Liz Dutton and Tim Lloyd will demonstrate how to cross-search all of our audio, video, music reference, and score collections using the Music Online platform. They'll also show you how Music Online meets all of your teaching and research needs through practical examples from topics presented at the meeting.

Additionally, all breakfast attendees will be entered in our drawing for a free year of access to Jazz Music Library for their entire institution! Imagine returning to work with that bit of good news.

Seating at the breakfast is limited, so please RSVP now if you'll be in Philadelphia.

We'll also be in booth #411 in the exhibit hall if you can't make the breakfast.

Free Download: Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Op. 74

Patrick Cole — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:22:56 -0500

Tchaikovsky wrote his sixth symphony in 1893. The symphony is commonly referred to as the 'Pathetique' symphony.

This recording is performed by the Mexico City Philharmonic Orchestra; Fernando Lozano, conductor.

Download this work now at http://musicdownloads.alexanderstreet.com/promo/.

Subscribers to Classical Music Library can learn more about Tchaikovsky here.

Free Download: Villa-Lobos' 5 Preludes for guitar, A. 419

Patrick Cole — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:16:46 -0400

Villa-Lobos composed these five preludes for guitar in 1940 for classical guitarist Andrés Segovia.

This recording is performed by guitarist Jad Azkoul.

Download this work now through October 20, 2009.

Subscribers to Classical Music Library can read more about Heitor Villa-Lobos here.

Free Download: Viotti's Violin Concerto No. 22 in A minor

Patrick Cole — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:24:08 -0400

Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755-1824) was an Italian violinist and composer, known as the father of the modern French school of violin performance in the 19th century. He wrote mostly for the violin, including string quartets, trios and concerti, but he did compose songs for voice and piano in the early 1800's.

This violin concerto is performed by Lola Bobesco, violin and the Rhine Palatinate Orchestra; Kurt Redel, conductor.

Download this work now through October 6, 2009.

Free Download: Josquin des Prez's Deploration sur la mort d'Ockeghem

Patrick Cole — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 09:35:12 -0400

Josquin composed this chanson in 1497 in response to the death of Johannes Ockeghem, a skilled composer of the French chanson.

This recording is performed by A Sei Voci.

Download this work now through September 22, 2009.

Featured Playlist: Doo Dah Days!

Patrick Cole — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:27:11 -0400

One of the best-loved features of Music Online is the ability to create and share playlists. Every month, we feature a different playlist and interview its author with an eye toward sharing library promotion tips and teaching aids that you can replicate in your library. If you have a playlist you’d like us to consider featuring, please email us at music@alexanderstreet.com.

Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s Cathy Chaparro is the author of this month’s featured playlist, which she created in conjunction with the Pittsburgh-area annual Stephen Foster Music and Heritage Festival, “Doo Dah Days.”

“I created the playlist to go with a Web page on Stephen Foster that we had been thinking about for some time, since Stephen Foster was born in Pittsburgh, and the local neighborhood of Lawrenceville celebration is in July each year.”

Chaparro’s playlist includes 15 recordings of works by the man considered to be America’s first professional composer, as performed by a wide range of artists, including Angelina Baker, Wayne Erbsen, and Pete Seeger. Recordings in the playlist include “Camptown Races,” “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Oh, Susanna,” and “Swanee River,” as well as Chaparro’s current favorite, “Nelly Bly,”—“because,” says Chaparro, “it’s such a lively tune, and I like the journalist who was given that pen name after the Foster tune.”

Chaparro also took advantage of the Alexander Street playlist functionality that let her include materials from anywhere on the Web, linking out to other Stephen Foster Web resources, such as the official Doo Dah Days Web site, and Stephen Foster’s 1851 Sketchbook, hosted on the Web site of The Center for American Music at the University of Pittsburgh, which is the principal repository for materials pertaining to Foster.

The result of Chaparro’s efforts is a fun and incredibly rich multi-media guide that will be of use both to the local Pittsburgh community and to anyone with an interest in Stephen Collins Foster.

For help creating a playlist like Cathy Chaparro’s for your library, access our Music Online playlist tutorial—it will walk you through the fundamentals of creating, annotating, and sharing playlists. You can also upload the tutorial and make it available to users on your library Web site so that they can create playlists of their favorite recordings.

Free Download - Lutoslawski's Overture for Strings

Patrick Cole — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 16:59:52 -0400

Witold Lutoslawski, a Polish composer, conductor and pianist, composed this Overture for string orchestra in 1949. His compositional style, more structured at first, changed to include more twelve-tone techniques after traveling to the US and Britain after conditions in Poland were relaxed in the late 50's.

This recording is performed by the Orchestre Royal de Chambre de Wallonie; Jean-Paul Dessy (Conductor).

Download this work now through September 8, 2009.

Promote your online collections with marketing tools from Alexander Street

Patrick Cole — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:00:00 -0400

Online collections offer library patrons a wealth of content that might otherwise be unobtainable or inaccessible, combined with technology that can deliver the content directly to a home computer. The library has expanded from a physical destination in the community to a far-reaching, digital network capable of serving a much broader audience than ever before. With so much information and material available in the electronic realm of the Web, how does a library make sure its patrons are aware of the resources available to them?

Even a "veteran library user" like Knoxville Symphony Orchestra violist Katy Gawne can be pleasantly surprised to discover streaming audio, scores, and reference content available via the library's Web site.

Alexander Street is helping libraries promote and publicize their online collections through a suite of marketing tools, available free of charge. From the physical (bookmarks and posters) to the digital (widgets, MARC records, and free downloads), our marketing tools are designed to support the mission of your library.

We echo Gonzaga University's belief that Music Online has "something for every music lover." And helping your patrons discover this fact for themselves is a task we'd like to accomplish together. Our marketing team is here to help, so if you have special requests or ideas please let us know. We will try to accommodate all requests and work with your library to spread the word.

The Free Resources section of our Web site is constantly growing, and we've seen libraries do some very creative things with our marketing tools. If you have ideas, need ideas, or have already successfully promoted your online collections, we'd love to hear from you. And if you haven't already subscribed to the periodic Music Online News, it's a great way to keep up with the latest news and see what other libraries are up to.

Customizable bookmarks for your online music collections

Patrick Cole — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:00:00 -0400

Looking for physical marketing tools to publicize your electronic resources? Try our new customizable bookmarks for your Alexander Street online music collections.

Bookmarks are great reminders for library patrons that there is a whole world of electronic resources available to them. And in many cases, these resources are available from home.

Each bookmark can be customized with your library or institution name, and detailed instructions for patrons wishing to access your online collections from a home computer. The editable regions can be customized using Adobe Reader.

To see a complete list of available bookmarks, and to download the customizable PDF files, visit http://alexanderstreet.com/resources/bookmarks.htm. We're adding new bookmarks all the time, so be sure to check periodically.

If you don't see a bookmark for a particular collection, or if you have any questions, please contact us.

Free Download: Wieniawski's Scherzo-tarantelle in G minor, Op. 16

Patrick Cole — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:32:09 -0400

Wieniawski, himself a virtuoso violinist, gave over 200 concerts in Russia from 1851-1853 with his younger brother, an accomplished pianist. He composed this scherzo-tarantelle for violin and piano around 1856.

This recording is an orchestrated version for symphony orchestra. It is performed by the Orchestre Symphonique de Radio-Télé-Luxembourg (Hubert Soudant, conductor), and Patrice Fontanarosa, violin.

Download this work now through August 25, 2009.