New acquisitions | Mendel Music Library Blog

Mendel Music Library’s new book section is by far my favorite to peruse. When I’m not on the hunt for a specific score or resource for class, I always find myself drifting back towards this section for a new read.

So, in honor of my love for this little corner of Mendel, I’m highlighting a couple of new reads at Mendel that you should check out if you have some spare time! It can be overwhelming to tackle the plethora of books, often with musical jargon in the title, but these books are readable for any amount of musical experience.

Curating Pop: Exhibiting Popular Music in the Museum Sarah Baker, Lauren Istvandity and Raphael Nowak, ML3470 .B356 2019

If you’re at all interested in museums and music, this is the read for you! Curating Pop is a fascinating read with an in depth interviews with museum workers and curators from global music museums. The book provides insights to how popular music and its history is presented to visitors and the public at large. I really enjoyed how this novel gave me an intimate look into the thought processes and decision-making of real museum curators from all around the world. Definitely a read if you’re interested in how the music you’re shown at museums ends up in those spots!

Revenge of the She-Punks Vivien Goldman, ML82 .G64 2019

Revenge of the She-Punks covers four primary themes identity, money, love and protest in a fascinating study of punk music. This book is a blend of many different types of source material: interviews, documented history, and her own personal experience as a music writer. The history and present of punk music for women is richly illustrated in this novel. If you’re interested in the intersection of gender and music, this read is definitely deserving of a perusal.

Visualizing The Beatles: A Complete Graphic History of the World’s Favorite Band John Pring and Rob Thomas, ML421 . B4 P756 2018

Sure, there are a lot of books about The Beatles, but none quite as visually pleasing as Visualizing The Beatles. As the name suggests, this book is filled with beautifully illustrated graphics and images that makes it both mentally and visually stimulating while you’re flipping through. This book packs in a lot of information in a delightful way, drawing your attention from page to brightly-colored page. Truly a “whole new way of looking at The Beatles,” this read cannot be missed!

Did you know that the Mendel Music Library owns stunning, historical scores in our Locked Reference (SVL) collection? These items are held behind the circulation desk and can only be viewed by request—the hidden gems of Mendel’s collection. One such example is the recently acquired, pristine copy of the lavishly illustrated first edition of the vocal score for Esclarmonde, Jules Massenet’s four-act opéra romanesque. It features ornate chromolithographic illustrations by Eugène Grasset, a pioneer of the Art Nouveau period.

The score was published in 1889 by Georges Hartmann soon after the opera’s premier on 14 May 1889 at the Paris Opéra-Comique (Théâtre Lyrique). Set in the legendary Middle Ages, the opera features a libretto by Alfred Blau and Louis de Gramont after Parthenopoeus de Blois, a medieval chanson de geste, and focuses around the emperor of Byzantium (Phorcas), who abdicates in favor of his daughter Esclarmonde, bequeathing her his magic powers that she uses to seduce the knight Roland de Blois (in a story filled with magic, an enchanted island, visions, veils, a siege, betrayal, exorcism, renunciation, and a concluding triumphal tournament). The part of the heroine was written for the California soprano Sibyl Sanderson (1865–1903), with whom Massenet was infatuated, and it is no accident that the music for her exudes passionate eroticism marked by intense chromatic inflection. Grasset not only created seven projected scenes (by magic lantern} for the opera’s staging but also collaborated with the publisher to produce elaborately illustrated front and back matter for the vocal score (covers, frontispiece, title and auxiliary pages, and borders around the cast lists and other preliminary texts) plus an exquisitely-wrought poster to advertise the score that features the unveiled heroine in a pose remarkably similar to the equally spectacular representation of Esclarmonde by lithographer Georges Clairin appearing on the score’s dust jacket. Mendel’s copy is noteworthy not only because it is a rarer first issue of the first edition that lacks a title-page dedication to Sanderson (found in the much more commonly held second issue) but also because the volume preserves all of the edition’s art work (including the bound-in dust jacket), which is often partially lacking in extant copies.

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