Find Yourself a Melody

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-281743822024-03-13T06:07:53.034-07:00Find Yourself a MelodyTales from the Paramount Theatre Music LibraryMelanie Archerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14900849905801667845noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28174382.post-20854033112768088382007-11-13T14:08:00.000-08:002007-11-13T14:31:08.769-08:00The Volunteer March

It's been over a year since I posted last, hasn't it? Yet the Web is proving a more archival medium than we suspected: reader X24 commented just a few weeks ago, with a reasonable question:How easy is it for a normal, everyday member of the workaday public to come in to peruse or make copies?Librarian Jean Cunningham knows all. She's the only staff member at the Library, which is otherwise

Melanie Archerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14900849905801667845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28174382.post-1162256497364216312006-11-09T16:56:00.000-08:002006-11-10T20:18:10.153-08:00Sing, Katie (but Leave The Piano Alone)

Thousands of pages of music, and I can't read a note. Nope, I'm just not a musician, despite my earnest middle school attempts to play the clarinet. Now that I've ceased contributing to noise pollution, what appeal could a music library hold for the likes of me?Plenty, really; probably even more than if I were just seeking the trombone part for "Caravan." A lot of the music at the Paramount

Melanie Archerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14900849905801667845noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28174382.post-1159225144443472092006-09-25T15:58:00.000-07:002006-11-09T18:26:26.497-08:00Songs of Other Days

Hear this song on a 1914 cylinder recordingWe're still handling the recent donations. Some of these are the 1970's piano albums which don't thrill me as much, but it seems that stratum is well-excavated, and more of the new items in the Library database are of earlier vintage.One of the satisfactions of data entry at the Library is discovering what else we have on the shelves. It's predictable

Melanie Archerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14900849905801667845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28174382.post-1157392367639039372006-09-04T10:51:00.000-07:002006-11-09T18:26:26.419-08:00Time in a Bottle

As I do with so many donations to the Library, I grabbed a stack of new acquisitions and sat at a PC, entering the new cataloguing information into the Library's database. This is a dull task in most other situations, but I like doing it at the Library: I get to handle the music, look at who wrote it, where and when it was published, even read the lyrics.As can be detected in my other posts, I

Melanie Archerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14900849905801667845noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28174382.post-1149006418629838462006-08-28T20:00:00.000-07:002006-11-09T18:26:25.684-08:00Yaaka Hula Hicky Dula

The Library volunteers have been gradually excavating the newest batch of donated sheet music. My role has been mainly to exclaim about the music's cover art: coming from the collection of an enthusiastic amateur musician, the sheet music is bound with appealing, colorful illustrations. Fresh donationsAt the top of the stack were more recent selections, mostly from the 1940's. The cover art for

Melanie Archerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14900849905801667845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28174382.post-1155695870876486752006-08-15T19:37:00.000-07:002006-11-09T18:26:26.345-08:00'Neath the Oaks

It frustrates me that the most anybody seems to know about Oakland are lurid crime stories. Yet, when I lived across the Bay in San Francisco, I too was as ignorantly dismissive of the metropolis I knew only as a sequence of BART stops. Within days of moving to Oakland, though, I became its champion. Now, if I move anywhere, it's not back to gray, congested, overpriced San Francisco.What's here

Melanie Archerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14900849905801667845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28174382.post-1154406415423689212006-07-31T21:25:00.000-07:002006-11-09T18:26:26.243-08:00Everybody Wants a Key to My Cellar

Some paying work removed me from the Paramount for a couple of weeks. I took a nice breather last Thursday, when I returned to the Library and its stacks of unsorted music for a welcome change of scenery.It was a special occasion: the Library hosted an august visitor, Kerry Stratton, Conductor and Music Director for the Toronto Philharmonia, scanning the Rudolph catalog and the Library's

Melanie Archerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14900849905801667845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28174382.post-1150145759754316132006-07-13T20:59:00.000-07:002006-11-09T18:26:25.937-08:00My Funny Valentine

The sheet music of yesterday! Faded, dog-eared, and torn, it is an astonishing heap of mementos that seem as lost in the recesses of time and as fruitless to scan as someone else's old valentines.– Rudi Blesh and Harriet Janis, They All Played Ragtime, p. 5It's true, I might question the value of my interest in these corny, baffling, and sometimes offensive songs published long ago. But there

Melanie Archerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14900849905801667845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28174382.post-1151901361556982762006-07-02T21:30:00.000-07:002006-11-09T18:26:26.078-08:00Up on the Housetop

Until now I'd been only in the library's basement office, where we do all the sorting, cataloguing, and data entry. Finally one afternoon librarian Jean Cunningham led me up several flights of stairs– from the Paramount's basement to its highest balcony– to an industrial-looking room holding movie projectors, file cabinets, noisy ventilation fans, and many, many steel shelving units

Melanie Archerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14900849905801667845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28174382.post-1150147933083252052006-06-12T13:56:00.000-07:002006-11-09T18:26:26.010-08:00Istanbul Was Once Constantinople

I know I'm not alone in my yearning for a fully searchable catalogue for the Library. At present we have most of the titles captured; much of the other data about the sheet music, such as composer or lyricist names, are unrecorded or incorrect. I'm helping with the task of data cleanup. We're trying to harmonize and simplify, to establish standards: there should be, for instance, only one way to

Melanie Archerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14900849905801667845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28174382.post-1149057009095820062006-05-30T23:04:00.000-07:002006-11-09T18:26:25.838-08:00Weaving My Dreams

"Library." For all this time I believed the term meant always a sober, high-ceilinged room with crown molding and Corinthian pilasters, the light kept filtered with wide-taped blinds, just like the Carnegie library in my hometown. Once upon a time it was the same for many Americans. Nobody went to low-ceilinged, unadorned, postwar "media centers."And so I kept envisioning the Paramount Theatre

Melanie Archerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14900849905801667845noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28174382.post-1148274324844966442006-05-21T22:03:00.000-07:002006-11-09T18:26:25.491-08:00Bring Back That Old-Fashioned Waltz

I spend Tuesdays underground. Regardless of how fine the weather is (and this spring it's been rainy too often), on Tuesdays I descend a narrow, beige-painted stairway which looks like it belongs in a submarine, to a basement room efficiently if bleakly lit by fluorescent bulbs. This is the Paramount Theatre Music Library, in Oakland, California.Anne Yambor sorting musicBy the time I arrive

Melanie Archerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14900849905801667845noreply@blogger.com1