[PADG:1038] LC National Digital Library Program announces- Civil War Band Music collection

[Tamara Swora-Gober <tswo@xxxxxxx>]

This message is being widely posted

*************************************
The Library of Congress National Digital Library Program and the Music
Division announce the release of ?Band Music from the Civil War Era? at:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwmhtml/cwmhome.html

This online collection brings together musical scores, recordings,
photographs, and essays documenting an important but insufficiently
explored part of the American musical past.  It features over 700
musical compositions, as well as 8 full-score modern editions and 19
recorded examples of brass band music in performance.  The cornets and
saxhorns that made up the all-brass bands of the 1850s remained a
popular, though decreasingly prominent, feature of American wind bands
through the nineteenth century.  Bands of this kind served in the armies
of both the North and the South during the Civil War, in the field as
well as for the entertainment of the officers.  Most of the sheet music
used by these brass bands, which typically existed only in "part books"
for individual instruments, has long been lost.  This online collection
presents several of the surviving examples of this music (both printed
and manuscript) from the collections of the Music Division of the
Library of Congress.  Also included are the Manchester Cornet Band Books
from the Walter Dignam Collection of the Manchester Historical Society
(Manchester, New Hampshire).  The part books are presented both in their
original order and are also grouped by song title.  Several of the
compositions from these part books are also presented in full-score
modern editions created especially for this online collection.

In addition to the musical scores and parts, Band Music from the Civil
War Era includes a gallery of photographs and drawings selected from
several Library of Congress collections.  These illustrations capture
the nature of life in the Civil War's military bands and help explain
the variety of the band books in this collection.  Band Music from the
Civil War Era also presents the original recordings and notes from a
1974 concert at the Library.  In addition, Music Division chief Jon
Newsom's essay "The American Brass Band Movement: A Historical
Overview," which synthesizes two works Mr. Newsom wrote in 1974 in
conjunction with the Library's concert, details the rise of marching and
concert bands during the Civil War era. "About the Instruments"
complements the essay with a discussion of the band instrumentation used
in the re-creation concert.

Band Music from the Civil War Era is an unusual Music Division online
collection in that it is not based on a permanent collection within the
division but has instead been created solely for presentation online. 
The Music Division is pleased to present such a wealth of material
delving into a little-known, yet fascinating period of American musical history.

Building the Digital Collection

Band Music from the Civil War Era is a collection with a great diversity
of materials and required a correspondingly diverse approach to its
digitization.  Music manuscripts, scores, photographs, and recordings
were among the materials digitized and each required a separate
approach. 

The band books were digitized by Preservation Resources from 35mm
microfilm. Three images of each page were delivered: a 600 dpi bi-tonal
TIFF, a 200 dpi greyscale JPEG, and a 200 dpi greyscale JPEG of only 600
pixel width.  These images act as the printable image, the detailed
image, and the page-turner image respectively. 

The band books were often organized and published as sets of part books.
 The part books each contain all of the songs in the band book for a
particular instrument.  In order to preserve this format but also to
make each song?s parts readily available, Library of Congress Music
Division staff organized the online collection so that, where
appropriate, each book can be viewed either by part book or by song
title. 

The sound recordings are taken from the compact disc recording Our
Musical Past, vol. 1: A Concert for Brass Band, Voice and Piano (Library
 of Congress OMP 101/102). The online presentation of these recordings
consists of WAVE format, MP3 format, and RealAudio format files.  The
WAVE and MP3 files were created by batch from the compact disc using the
software package Audio Catalyst. The RealAudio format files were derived
from the WAVE files using the software package Sound Forge. 

The modern-edition full scores were created by Music Division staff
using Finale2000 (Coda Music Software). The resulting Finale format
files were converted to bitonal TIFF image files for online
presentation. 

The song sheets were scanned by Music Division staff directly from the
original paper on the AGFA Horizon Ultra scanner.  Images were captured
as full-color, 300 dpi TIFFs before being converted to derivative
reference JPEGs (64 colors and JPEG compression of 90) and page-turner
GIFs (16 colors). 

The images in the Photo Gallery were captured by Library of Congress
Information Technology Services staff on a Phase One FX scanner and
processed with MagicScan 4.0.  Images were captured in full color at
7000x7000 dpi TIFFs before being converted to derivative reference JPEGs
(64 colors and JPEG compression of 90) and thumbnail GIFs. 

Please direct any questions about this collection to ndlpcoll@xxxxxxx