Comments for Cornell Music Libraryblog

Comment on Musicologist Mary Rasmussen dies by Elizabeth Knies Storm

Elizabeth Knies Storm — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 18:24:36 +0000

Mary was one of the first friends I made back in 1965, when my (then) husband and I first moved to Durham. We lived across the street from Mary’s parents and used to play billiards with Mary on Sunday mornings in the basement of her folks’ home. Our friendship continued over the years, though there were long stretches when we weren’t in touch. Along with many othere, I’m sure,I’ll never forget picking my way through the piles of papers, books, and musical instruments on Woodman Avenue when I dropped by. Busy as she was with her teaching, research, instrument-building and musicianship, Mary always had time to have a cup of tea and talk a while. The last time I visited, she dug up a bunch of chives and gave them to me for my herb garden. They are a lasting memorial of her generosity of spirit.

Comment on Musicologist Mary Rasmussen dies by Mary Elizabeth Ryan

Mary Elizabeth Ryan — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:40:54 +0000

I was just thinking about “Mary Raz,” a lifelong friend of my mother Lorraine Ryan, who passed away ten years ago, and came upon this notice of her death. I was suddenly overwhelmed with memories, all indelibly laced with Mary’s cantankerous, brilliant, profoundly loyal character. Once you were her friend, you stayed that way. She might not approve of you, but that was that. (She once clomped into our house, noticed all of us hunched over our soup bowls, noses buried in books as was our habit, and sniffed, “Rampant Ryan Rudeness.”) She taught Durham kids tennis in the summer and took us to our first string quartet concert in which I believe she played. She was refreshingly herself. I never saw her in a skirt in an era when ladies wore gloves and pearls to the bus depot. She lived with her parents, then by herself, filling her house with instruments, musical scores, her archives. She was literally “at home” with her scholarship. I was surprised to learn she was only 77 at the time of her death. To us, Mary Rasmussen seemed like some ageless colossus. All I could think was that Gideon had better look out, because Mary will have something to say about his horn playing.

Comment on Musicologist Mary Rasmussen dies by Josephine Roccuzzo

Josephine Roccuzzo — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:13:56 +0000

As a former music student at UNH of both Mary Rasmussen and Dr. DeVoto, I was very sad to learn today of Mary’s death last year. She was my string methods teacher, and her passion and energy were enthralling. She led the class in an impromptu outdoor performance of Bach one spring, and herded us all to Symphony Hall to hear the (then unrecordable) “sheen” of live strings in Shubert’s Unfinished. I also remember an outing at her house, where, hammer in hand, she carried on with an ambitious renovation project. Like dear Dr. DeVoto, Mary was generous with her wisdom and enthusiasm, and I will cherish those memories all my life.

Comment on Prospective MARC announcement by Kathy Glennan

Kathy Glennan — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:07:02 +0000

Whoops! I entered comment #5 accidentally, without actually finishing the entry. So, here’s the rest of what I had in mind:
The sections could specifically include background & recommendations, possibly with subheaders for sound recordings and notated music. This would help frame the desired recommendations and make them stand out more on the page/screen.

Comment on Prospective MARC announcement by Kathy Glennan

Kathy Glennan — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:03:11 +0000

I recommend reorganizing this statement so the background, recommendation, etc. stands out more clearly, with sections such as:

Comment on Prospective MARC announcement by jalberts

jalberts — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:44:18 +0000

In regard to Kathy’s comment, the bytes show up in scores and recordings workforms, so I think we need to at least address how to code them (or not), if only to recommend following OCLC defaults in the sound recording format.

Comment on Prospective MARC announcement by Beth Flood

Beth Flood — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:17:39 +0000

Since I have some experience making use of coded fields that were sometimes perceived as not useful (the 048 project at Kent State, for instance: http://www.library.kent.edu/kentlink_instrument_search.php), I wonder if these two bytes of info *could* be made to be useful. I agree there is probably less interest in the transposition/arrangement byte, but I can envision usefulness of a limit to scores that include parts. Such a limit would of course be OPAC dependent, at this point, and so maybe not so useful. Since the application of the subject subdivisions “$v Parts” and “$v Scores and parts” is relatively consistent, these may provide a better way to find parts.

So, now that I’ve argued devil’s advocate, I’ll support a statement that says what we should all do with these bytes! They maybe be a good idea, but can we really use them?

Comment on Prospective MARC announcement by Kathy Glennan

Kathy Glennan — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:44:41 +0000

The statement probably should make it clearer from the beginning that these two bytes apply only to notated (not recorded) music.

Comment on Prospective MARC announcement by David Guion

David Guion — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:53:20 +0000

I confess to some surprise when fixed fields for parts and arrangements/transposition turned up in the scores workform. If there was any discussion in advance, I either missed it or it was so uninformative that I have forgotten it. In any case, I dutifully filled in those fields until I recognized that our Sirsi ILS has not upgraded its database to include them. They simply get stripped from the record when it’s imported. Until I read Kathy’s post, I had no idea where they came from, why the information in them mattered, or how they would be useful without retrospectively adding them to everything else that was in the library before they became available. Somehow I simply assumed that the BCC had commented on them and approved them.

In short, I am glad to concur with the statement to the effect that these bytes are essentially pointless and should be ignored. I assume that there is no problem with the fact that in some records other values have been added–no problem, that is, besides the waste of a little bit of time and keystrokes.

Comment on Musicologist Mary Rasmussen dies by Sabron Reynolds Newton

Sabron Reynolds Newton — Sat, 24 May 2008 17:51:30 +0000

Checking for news of Mary Rasmussen, who uncharacteristically failed to respond to my 2007 holiday greeting, I came upon this online notice and fine tribute. Mary and I were fellow students in the University of Illinois library school and kept in annual touch for 60 years. Because we stopped to visit around 1980 when we passed through Durham on a family vacation, I can picture the iconography files in the house which she struggled to maintain, and I, too, hope her files find a home. I am sorry she was unable to complete, to her satisfaction, the project to which she devoted so many years, but I note that in 1998 she reported receiving the Christopher Monk award from the Historic Brass Society “in recognition of pioneering scholarly research in brass music.” I will miss receiving new batches of wry comments on her interface with the local, academic, and medical communities. I will continue to remember and tell a Mary Rasmussen anecdote now and then.