Hello everyone. It is
Carl at the keyboard again. Welcome to
another edition of life from the deep recesses of the library on a bitter cold
and snowy day.
As most of you already know, the librarians at Ripon College
have master’s degrees in Library Science, but some of us also have subject
specific master’s degrees as well. My
second master’s degree happens to be in
Church Music. So today, I’d like to talk
a little bit about the music section and some of the interesting resources that
Lane Library has available. I can only
touch on a few items, but would be happy to chat further about available
resources for your personal research.
So, here we go.
Most people know that at Ripon College we have two libraries
that contain musical resources. Lane
Library contains the historical, biographical and instructional texts that you
might need for your research. Rodman
Center For The Arts contains the score and sound recording library for
listening and practice.
When a person thinks of music research, one of the first
background research tools that comes to mind is The New Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Ripon College owns two editions. The 2001 edition is housed at Rodman and the
1980 edition is housed at Lane Library.
Call #: ML100
.G885 1980. Each article contains a
quality summary of a given topic, plus a bibliography of further sources to
consult.
While I find "Groves" fascinating as a musician and scholar, there are many other interesting titles in Lane Library’s
music text collection and I will highlight a few of the more interesting ones.
We own a copy of The
Southern Harmony. This item is a
hymnal for worship, but not quite the hymnal you might find when you stroll
into one of our local Ripon churches. When using
modern hymnals, it is common to have accompaniments via organ, piano, and/or other
instruments. In contrast, hymns in The Southern Harmony, and other hymnals
like it, were sung with no accompaniment. They also use a form of musical notation
known as Shape Notes which was intended to make congregational singing easier. See the following Wikipedia articles for
further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Harmony & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_note The call # for this book is: M2117 .S74 1993.
Lane Library also owns a copy of The Liber Usualis. For those
of you who are unfamiliar as to what this book is, it is the Roman Catholic
liturgy book used before Vatican II, complete with Gregorian Chants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Vatican_Council & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_chant
The liturgical chants found in The Liber use an older form of natation
(Neumes), notated on a four-line staff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neume Instruction on how to read and sing these chants are in the book, but if you want to give them a try, be prepared to chant in Latin. The Call # for this book is: M2148.1.T8 L42 1952
I recall from childhood hearing the phrase “Music soothes
the savage beast.” Well, I may not have
much experience with trying to soothe savage beasts, but I do know that music
can evoke an emotional response in people.
Oxford University Press published a book in 2011 that addresses the
concept of music and emotion. It is
titled, surprisingly enough, Handbook of
Music and Emotion : Theory, research, applications. Check it out at: http://catalog.ripon.bywatersolutions.com/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=131003 The call # for this book is: ML3830 .H195 2011
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