Notes for Notes

The Music Library Association announced publication and research awards at its 2014 meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. The Vincent H. Duckles Award for the best book-length bibliography or other research tool in music is awarded to David Lasocki and Richard Griscom for The Recorder: A Research and Information Guide, 3d ed. (New York: Routledge, 2012). Lasocki and Griscom have given us the gift of “all things recorder”: history, repertory, design and construction, playing technique, treatises, tutors, performance practice, art and literature about, pedagogy, performers, interviews—an exhaustive (and exhausting) source of knowledge about the instrument under one cover. The Richard S. Hill Award for the best article on music librarianship or article of a music-bibliographic nature is awarded to Christopher Reynolds for his article, “Documenting the Zenith of Women Song Composers: A Database of Songs Published in the United States and the British Commonwealth, ca. 1890–1930,” Notes 60, no. 4 (June 2013): 671–87. Reynolds’s article calls attention to his database devoted to women composers and songwriters and the historical issues that the database makes possible to investigate. The database, a work in progress, contains nearly 5,000 songs by 1,607 women composers and songwriters; 3,400 of these songs are housed in the Special Collections of Shields Library, UC Davis. Although the scores themselves are not yet digitized, both the database and a finding aid for the UC Davis collection may be downloaded. In his article, Reynolds has provided a remarkable analysis of publication patterns, pseudonyms, and selection of poetry set to music, documenting the extraordinary rise and decline of women song composers that occurred in the years before and after World War I, and discussing the differences in the careers of American and British women songwriters. In short, Reynolds has provided the music world with a remarkable analysis of women songwriters before and after the turn of the last century.

The Eva Judd O’Meara Award for the best review published in Notes is awarded to Erik Entwistle, for his review of F. James Rybka’s Bohuslav Martinů: The Compulsion to Compose (Scarecrow Press) in the June 2013 issue of Notes. Throughout his review, Entwistle’s subject knowledge is evident, for he points out unhesitatingly both the strengths and weaknesses of Rybka’s book. Beyond this is the manner and clarity in which he presents his arguments: a style which allows his “learned essay” to be “read with interest and profit by any non-specialist or expert.”

Research Awards: The Dena Epstein Award for Archival and Library Research in American Music is awarded to Alice Miller Cotter for research on John Adams’s operas in the composer’s private archive at his home in Berkeley, California, as well as in other California collections; and to Devora Geller for research in the Rumshinsky archive at UCLA in support of her project “Paradise’s Flower: Joseph Rumshinsky and Yiddish Theater Music in New York, 1900–1950.”

Other MLA Awards: MLA awards the Kevin Freeman Travel Grant to students, recent graduates, or other colleagues who are new to the profession for support to attend the MLA annual meeting. Freeman Grant recipients who attended the 2014 MLA meeting in Atlanta were Angela Pratesi, Jennifer Vaughan, and Elin Williams. The Lenore F. Coral IAML Travel Grant for support of travel expenses and conference fees for the annual IAML conference was given to Daniel F. Boomhower. ARL/MLA Diversity & Inclusion Fellows is a scholarship opportunity for library-school students from under-represented racial and ethnic minority groups. Recipients announced in 2014 were Joy M. Doan, Rahni B. Kennedy, Jakilah Mason, Patrick Sifuentes, and Ricky Williams.

The MLA Citation, the association’s highest honor, was presented to James P. Cassaro, currently head of the Finney Music Library, and associate professor of music at the University of Pittsburgh. Recognizing his distinguished service to music librarianship, the MLA board wrote, “Cassaro’s profound and selfless legacy of service will stand as a lasting contribution to music librarianship and to MLA. He has given a lifetime of work and dedication at the highest level and has improved our association and profession in numerous ways. President, Notes editor-in...