“Sounds Upstairs: Hear the Library’s Music Department Collection Come to Life!”

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November 1, 2013 · 5:00 am

Crankie? You Bet!

Crankie. That’s a word that describes Ellen Gozion. Oh sure, she sings with a translucent voice as she shares Appalachian songs, folk hymns, ballads and more, and spins spidery webs of 5-string banjo accompaniment around her lyrics, her tunes. Ellen’s enchanting performances include commentary. The listener steps into the setting of each song.

Ellen Gozion

But is she crankie? Oh yes! Ellen’s revival of an ancient form of picture-story performance is called a crankie. It’s a panoramic scene, rolled up inside a box, then hand-cranked so that it scrolls across a viewing frame. A painted “powerpointless” presentation, the crankie illustrates the story Ellen tells in song.

Picture-story recitation in its earliest form involved the display of representational paintings accompanied by sung narration. Ancient forms of this practice in India, Indonesia, China, and Japan were carried to the Middle East and Europe. Eventually instrumental music and puppets augmented printed, painted, embroidered, or otherwise decorated narrative images. Mid-19th century advances in technology led to moving panoramas, which preceded cinema. A recent revival of interest in picture-story performance among artists, puppeteers and activists in the West will be represented at our next Music Department concert through Ellen’s handmade crankies.

Join us Sunday afternoon at the Main Library for this month’s Sounds Upstairs concert. Ellen will sing and play, and tell us about her forays into the Music Department’s folk song collection to mine new/old material. She’ll also get crankie.

Sounds Upstairs: The Music Department’s Collection Comes to Life!
Sunday, November 3
3:30 — 4:30 PM
CLP – Main, International Poetry Room (second floor)

–Julie

Have Your Cake and Concert, Too!

“Have You Tried the Music Library?”

In 1938, a group of musically prominent Pittsburgh citizens approached the director of Carnegie Library [of Pittsburgh] requesting that he consider the establishment of a music collection. He agreed and selected a thirty-year-old library assistant to be its initial organizer. Irene Millen gathered together the music materials scattered throughout the library system and made them accessible to the public. When it became clear that the acquisitions budget for music would not meet the demands of the enthusiastic public, Irene harnessed that enthusiasm to found the Friends of the Music Library, with an administrative board comprised of representatives from every Pittsburgh musical organization. The Friends served both as fundraiser and as public relations resource for the music collection. “Have you tried the library?” was something she taught the board to ask their constituencies whenever they had a music need or problem.

Ida Reed, the Music Department manager who succeeded Irene Millen, wrote this description of the establishment of the department. In my role as the current manager, I also like to ask the “Have you tried the Music Library?” question. Users, supporters and friends all know—there’s no better resource in Pittsburgh for the serious musician, as well as anyone with a casual interest in music, including, in the words of Irene Millen, “parents whose children are studying music, program annotators, and non-practicing music lovers.”

1938 — 2013

Next month the Music Department will celebrate 75 years of service to music fanciers in Pittsburgh and beyond. Cue the trumpets! Our new concert series heralds a coming season of celebration.

“Sounds Upstairs: Hear the Library’s Music Department Collection Come to Life!“

Sounds Upstairs intends to lead listeners of all ages up the welcoming marble staircase to the second floor of the Main Library in Oakland, to hear acoustic presentations of music drawn from our collection. The thousands of books, scores, and recordings that fill our department leave no room for concertizing, so our series will be held down the hall, in the International Poetry Room.

Sunday, September 8, our inaugural concert presents violinist Sandro Leal-Santiesteban and cellist Hannah Whitehead performing both solo and duo pieces in a program ranging from Bach to Gershwin with recent compositions by Mark Summer and Pittsburgher Sean Neukom.