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    Pop Songs, ‘Hamilton’ and Windows 95 Chime Join National Registry

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    The recordings, along with works by Tracy Chapman, Elton John and the rock band Chicago, are among the 25 selected for preservation by the Library of Congress.Hits by Celine Dion and Mary J. Blige. The song “Happy Trails” by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. Tracy Chapman’s debut album. The original cast album of the Broadway musical “Hamilton.” The chimes Brian Eno wrote for Microsoft Windows in 1995.These were among the 25 audio works chosen this year to join the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress, which preserves works deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” that are at least 10 years old.More than 2,600 nominations were made by the public this year, with “Chicago Transit Authority,” the 1969 album from the rock band Chicago, topping the list, according to a news release from the Library of Congress.The Elton John album “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” — which features songs like “Bennie and the Jets” and “Candle in the Wind” — and the R&B album “My Life” by Mary J. Blige were among the top 10 of public nominations.The new class of inductees for the National Recoding Registry brings its total number of titles to 675.Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, said in a statement that the selected works were the sounds of America and that the registry was “our evolving nation’s playlist.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Larry Appelbaum, Who Found Jazz Treasure in the Archives, Dies at 67

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      He helped turn the Library of Congress into a leading center for research on the history of jazz, and made some surprising discoveries of his own.Larry Appelbaum, a music archivist who over a long career at the Library of Congress helped make it a leading center for research into the history of jazz, discovering a number of important recordings along the way, died on Feb. 21 in Washington. He was 67.His death, in a hospital, was from complications of pneumonia, his brother Howard said.Mr. Appelbaum specialized in one of the Library of Congress’s most complex tasks: the preservation of recorded speech and music, often involving its transfer from one format to another. As part of that effort, he acquired and processed collections of old recordings, a job that offered no end of drudge work, but also the opportunity for serendipitous finds.His biggest discovery came in 2005, when the library received a large collection of jazz recordings — fragile acetate tapes made by Voice of America at Carnegie Hall in 1957.“There was literally a truck filled with tapes that came to us,” he recalled in an interview for the D.C. Jazz Festival.As he flipped through them, he found one labeled, in pencil, “Thelonious Monk Quartet,” with a few track listings. Interesting, he thought, but not necessarily momentous.“It was only when I put the tape on the machine and started to listen to it that I thought, ‘That’s John Coltrane,’” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      聆听近200年后首度现世的肖邦圆舞曲

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      晚春的一天，在曼哈顿摩根图书馆和博物馆的地下室深处，馆长罗宾逊·麦克莱伦正在整理一批文化纪念品。其中有毕加索签名的明信片，一位法国女演员的老照片，还有勃拉姆斯和柴可夫斯基的信件。当麦克莱伦看到第147号物品时，他惊呆了：The Morgan Library & Museum那是一张有破洞、索引卡大小的乐谱残篇…………上面有小小的谱号和一个显眼的名字。这首曲子被标为“圆舞曲”。有一个草写的名字：肖邦。“我心想，‘这是怎么回事？这是什么呢？’”麦克莱伦说。“我认不出这是哪段音乐。”本身也是作曲家的麦克莱伦拍下了手稿的照片，并在家里用一台数码钢琴弹奏了它。真的是肖邦吗？他有些疑虑：这部作品异常激烈，以安静、不和谐的音符开场，然后爆发出轰轰烈烈的和弦。他把照片发给了宾夕法尼亚大学肖邦研究权威杰弗里·卡尔伯格。“我惊呆了，”卡尔伯格说。“我知道我以前从未见过这个。”在检测了手稿的纸张和墨水，分析了笔迹和音乐风格，并咨询了外部专家后，摩根博物馆得出了一个重要结论：该作品很可能是浪漫主义时代伟大的幻想家弗雷德里克·肖邦创作的一首不为人知的圆舞曲，这是半个多世纪以来首次有这样的发现。郎朗在曼哈顿施坦威音乐厅演奏肖邦圆舞曲全曲。Video by Mohamed Sadek for The New York Times这一发现可能会在古典音乐界引发争论，因为这个领域有时会对新发现杰作的报道持怀疑态度，而且历史上一直存在赝品和伪造手稿的情况。但近年来也有重大发现：德国莱比锡的一家图书馆于9月宣布，该馆发现了一份时长12分钟的莫扎特弦乐三重奏的副本。肖邦于1849年去世，时年39岁，死因可能是肺结核，新近发现的肖邦作品十分稀有。虽然他是音乐界最受喜爱的人物之一——他的心脏被浸泡在一罐酒精中，保存在华沙的一座教堂里——但他不如其他作曲家高产，他创作了大约250首作品，几乎全部是钢琴独奏曲。摩根博物馆的手稿据说是在1830年至1835年之间完成的，当时肖邦20岁出头。这份手稿有着几个奇特之处。尽管人们认为作品已是完稿，但它比肖邦的其他圆舞曲短——只有48小节以及一个反复段落，大约80秒。这首曲子为A小调，有着不同寻常的力度标记，包括开始不久的一处表示最大音量的极强音。但摩根博物馆表示确信这首圆舞曲手稿是真迹，并指出了肖邦的几个特点。The Morgan Library & Museum博物馆表示，该手稿纸张和墨水与肖邦当时使用的一致。手稿笔迹与肖邦的笔迹相符…………甚至包括不寻常的低音谱号画法。摩根博物馆收藏的另一份肖邦手稿也有类似的低音谱号。那份手稿上还点缀着肖邦的涂鸦，肖邦喜欢画画。“我们对我们的结论充满信心，”麦克莱伦说。“现在是时候将它公之于众，让全世界看看，并形成他们自己的看法了。”明星钢琴家郎朗最近在曼哈顿的施坦威音乐厅为《纽约时报》录制了这首圆舞曲。他说，这首作品让他感觉像是肖邦的作品。他说，刺耳的开头让人想起了波兰乡村严酷的冬天。“这不是肖邦最复杂的音乐，”他补充道，“但它是你能想象到的最地道的肖邦风格之一。”在肖邦去世后绘制的一幅肖像。 General Photographic Agency/Getty Images肖邦1810年出生于华沙郊外的一个村庄，父亲是法国人，母亲是波兰人。1830年，20岁的肖邦离开了波兰。他定居在巴黎，很快成为一名琴键上的诗人，他的音乐将人们带到全新的情感世界。与家人的分离以及对波兰未来的担忧可能是肖邦在这个时期的音乐作品带有苦痛色彩的原因之一。19世纪30年代初，波兰爆发了叛乱，武装反抗占领波兰部分领土的俄罗斯帝国。肖邦再也没有回到过祖国。“父亲绝望了——他不知道该如何是好，也没有人帮助让母亲振奋起来，”他在1831年游历德国时在日记中写道。“而我却无所事事地站在这里——我两手空空地站在这里。我只能无病呻吟，不时地对着钢琴发泄我的痛苦。”有一次，巴黎的一位贵族请肖邦解释他音乐中的忧郁，肖邦引用了波兰语单词“zal”，意为怀旧或遗憾。著名的肖邦传记作者艾伦·沃克表示，在圆舞曲等短曲中，可以明显感受到“zal”的韵味，肖邦在其中注入了一种此前只用于更宏伟的作品的情感深度。圆舞曲曾是欢快的舞厅主打曲风。但肖邦的圆舞曲从来都不是用来跳舞的。肖邦没有创作过交响曲、歌剧或清唱剧，人们并不总是将他视为一位严肃的作曲家。“我们的先祖从未想到，肖邦的一首短小的圆舞曲或玛祖卡舞曲，内涵会比博凯里尼的整部交响曲还要丰富，”沃克说。虽然专家认为肖邦创作了多达28首圆舞曲，但只有八首在他生前出版，九首在他死后出版。其余的都已轶失或损毁。他的一些圆舞曲振奋而精致，比如这首《华丽大圆舞曲》。还有一些则是嬉戏玩闹的曲目，比如《“小狗”圆舞曲》。此曲在流行文化中经久不衰，兔八哥和芭芭拉·史翠珊都曾演绎过。还有一些是忧郁的冥想，如《B小调圆舞曲》。那个时代的许多钢琴家喜欢在众多观众面前展示令人眼花缭乱的技艺。但肖邦讨厌他所谓的“空中飞人学校”式的钢琴演奏。他更喜欢沙龙的亲密氛围，在皇室、银行家、艺术家和音乐家面前表演他的作品——作曲家弗朗茨·李斯特称这些聚会为“肖邦教堂”。在这些场合，他的乐迷有时会索要圆舞曲等小作品作为礼物。肖邦同意了，偶尔会将同一首圆舞曲送给几个人。他至少有五次将《F小调圆舞曲》的手稿送给别人，全部是女士。“请您自己留着，”他在给一位受赠者的信中写道。“我不希望它被公开。”这首摩根博物馆的圆舞曲可能就是在这种情况下写成的。它被写在一张约4×5英寸的小纸片上，是一种常用于礼品的纸张。乐谱上有指法和力度记号，这表明肖邦认为这首曲子将来可能会用于演奏。但这位严谨的作曲家——在一页乐谱上花数周时间对肖邦是常有的事——似乎对这首圆舞曲有所犹豫。他没有像通常那样在乐谱上签名。根据笔迹分析，手稿顶端的“肖邦”是别人加上去的。此外，乐谱中还有几处未更正的节奏和记谱错误。艾莉莎·拉吉威尔画的肖邦，他讨厌所谓的“空中飞人学校”式钢琴演奏，更喜欢沙龙的亲密氛围。Universal History Archive, via Getty Images不管肖邦有何意图，这首圆舞曲从未公开过，也一直不为世人所知，可能一直在收藏家手中。纽约室内设计学院院长小A·谢里尔·惠顿一度获得了这份手稿。1972年去世的惠顿是一位狂热的签名收集者。他的子女说，他的大部分收藏都是从麦迪逊大道著名的沃尔特·R·本杰明签名店获得的。惠顿是一位业余钢琴家和作曲家，曾师从名师罗杰·塞申斯和纳迪娅·布朗热，对古典音乐情有独钟。二战期间，他作为海军中尉在南太平洋服役，只带了一本书：贝多芬晚期弦乐四重奏的微型乐谱。他写了三部歌剧，在去世当天完成了最后一部。小A·谢里尔·惠顿，摄于1958年。惠顿是一位业余钢琴家和作曲家，热衷于收集签名，肖邦手稿一度为他所有，后来连同他的其它一些资料被送到了摩根博物馆。via Paul Whiton“他总是弹奏肖邦，”他的儿子保罗·惠顿说。“这是他逃避现实的方式。”惠顿回忆说，他见过在康涅狄格州威尔顿祖宅陈列的这首圆舞曲，但家人并没有意识到它的重要性。惠顿的藏品于2019年作为阿瑟·萨茨的遗赠来到摩根博物馆，萨茨是惠顿的好友，从后者的妻子珍手中买下了这些收藏。五年来，这些藏品一直没有编目，部分原因是新冠大流行。藏品附带的说明没有提供太多关于这首圆舞曲的线索，只写着：肖邦，弗雷德里克音乐手稿。四行两谱表不明钢琴曲，看起来出自肖邦之手，但未署名。摩根博物馆的专家团队在红外线和紫外线下检查了手稿，以明确是否有损坏和涂改。他们确定这首曲子是用铁胆墨水在19世纪的机织纸上写成的。音乐风格与肖邦在19世纪30年代早期的作品一致。乐谱上的记号符合肖邦著名的细小笔迹特征，乐谱上方的“Valse”字样也是这样。研究人员考虑了其他可能性。肖邦是否抄写了别人的圆舞曲？会不会是学生的作品？这两种可能性似乎都不大。圆舞曲多变的开场仍然是一个谜。帮助鉴定乐谱的卡尔伯格说，这首圆舞曲的调——A小调——或许能提供线索。肖邦一些最汹涌澎湃的音乐都是用这个调式创作的，包括所谓的《冬风练习曲》、《第二前奏曲》，以及《第二叙事曲》的一些片段。“这个调，”卡尔伯格说，“让他写出了不同寻常的作品”。肖邦在1831年写了另一首狂暴且有不协和音的圆舞曲：《E小调圆舞曲》，同样是以爆发开场。摩根博物馆的这首圆舞曲的特殊性很可能会引发对其起源的争论。剑桥大学音乐教授约翰·林克说：“其中有很多极其不寻常的元素，你不得不问，这真的是肖邦的音乐吗？”他审阅了手稿的照片，但没有参与摩根博物馆的研究。尽管如此，林克还是认为很难质疑对笔迹、纸张和墨水的分析，称其为“关键的、决定性的因素”。他说，这份手稿可能反映了“肖邦充分发挥的想象力，一种在任何想法都还没有被琢磨透之前的创造性爆发”。肖邦会如何看待这首圆舞曲的公开？他经常用愤怒的涂写和墨水斑点来遮住自己的失误，他还告诉朋友们，他希望未发表的作品都在自己死后被销毁。不过，著名钢琴家和作曲家斯蒂芬·霍夫说，肖邦可能会为自己的音乐仍然受到人们的喜爱而感到高兴。他说，这首圆舞曲“可能没那么重要，但它有一种魅力和珍贵”。“只要肖邦知道他的影响是巨大的，他的作品被很好地收集、研究和记录了下来，”霍夫还说：“我无法想象他会不高兴。”音频：《降E大调华丽大圆舞曲》，作品第18号；《降D大调“小狗”圆舞曲》，作品第64号之1；《降B小调圆舞曲》，作品第69号之2，由阿图尔·鲁宾斯坦演奏（索尼古典）。《E小调圆舞曲》，作品号KK IVa之15，由爱丽丝·纱良·奥特演奏（德意志留声机）。由穆罕默德·萨迪克为《纽约时报》拍摄视频，在纽约施坦威音乐厅录制。由约瑟芬·塞奇威克、乔莉·鲁本和瑞秋·萨尔茨制作。翻译：Ziyu Qing、Annie Xu、晋其角赫海威(Javier C. Hernández)是《纽约时报》文化记者，报道纽约及其他地方的古典音乐和舞蹈。他于2008年加入时报，此前曾任驻北京和纽约记者。点击查看更多关于他的信息。

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      The Folger Library Wants to Reintroduce You to Shakespeare

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      After an $80 million expansion, the Folger Shakespeare Library is reopening with a more welcoming approach — and all 82 of its First Folios on view.Social media is awash with pictures of jaw-dropping libraries, elaborately styled home bookshelves and all manner of drool-worthy Library Porn. But for understated dazzle, it’s hard to compete with a wall in the new basement galleries of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.For decades, the library’s 82 copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio — the largest collection in the world — were locked away in a vault, with access granted only to select scholars. But now, anyone can enter the public galleries and see them displayed in a special wall case, laid flat with spines out.In the dim, curatorially correct lighting, they glow like some kind of mysterious dark matter. But during a preview of the building, which reopens this weekend after a four-year, $80 million expansion, the Folger’s director, Michael Witmore, reached for a sunnier metaphor.Six of the Folger Shakespeare Library’s copies of the First Folio. The library has placed all 82 of its First Folios — the largest collection in the world — on permanent display.Justin T. Gellerson for The New York TimesThe Folio — a collection of 36 of Shakespeare’s plays, published by his friends in 1623, seven years after his death — is “the ultimate message in a bottle.”“And the miracle is that every generation opens up the bottle and it turns out the plays, the message, was addressed to them,” Witmore said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Patti Smith Sings for the Morgan Library & Museum’s 100th Anniversary

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      The Morgan Library & Museum drew devotees out for a party celebrating its centennial, including Peter Marino, Vito Schnabel and Walton Ford.Over a century ago, J.P. Morgan built a majestic library for his opulent mansion in Midtown Manhattan. After his death, his son, the financier Jack Morgan, opened it to the public in 1924, and it eventually became the Morgan Library & Museum. Last night, crowds of art patrons and well-heeled bibliophiles gathered in that grand library to attend the Morgan’s centennial celebration.Beneath stained glass windows and murals of Dante and Socrates, guests wearing tuxedos sipped martinis while a violinist performed classical covers of pop songs by Keane and Taylor Swift. Servers wended through the crowd, carrying hors d’oeuvres trays of crescent duck and caviar as they passed shelves lined with rare editions of works by Rousseau and Voltaire.Devotees of the Morgan like the architect Peter Marino, the art dealer Vito Schnabel and the artist Walton Ford were in attendance. Patti Smith and her daughter, Jesse Paris Smith, who would soon perform a song together at the evening’s dinner, pulled away from the cocktail hour to stroll through the exhibit “Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature,” which displays the manuscripts and picture letters of the creator of Peter Rabbit and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle.“Through her ephemera, you can feel Potter looking at her paint brushes,” Patti Smith said. “The Morgan’s collection honors the hand that writes the book. You get a sense of what an artist or writer was thinking as they were creating. You can see the energy lifting off Beethoven’s ink-splotched pages.”The Morgan Library & Museum’s director, Colin B. Bailey, slices into a cake made to look like a stack of books. The soprano Latonia Moore.The media and automotive heiress Katharine Rayner.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Roberta Pereira to Lead New York Performing Arts Library

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      Roberta Pereira, the director of the Playwrights Realm, will lead the library, which is home to more than eight million items relating to music, theater and dance.Roberta Pereira has had a career-long goal to make the performing arts accessible for all.So when she saw a posting for an executive director position at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, one of the country’s leading repositories relating to music, theater and dance, she had an immediate thought: dream job.“I believe the arts are stronger when more people can participate,” said Pereira, 43, who will become the first Latino person to lead the institution, which is home to more than eight million items. “And the library’s mission is free access and knowledge for all.”Pereira, currently the executive director of the Playwrights Realm, an Off Broadway theater company devoted to early-career playwrights, will start the position in January. She succeeds Jennifer Schantz, who left the library in 2022 after two years. (Linda Murray, the curator of the Performing Arts Library’s Jerome Robbins Dance Division and the associate director of its collections and research services, filled in as interim director.)Brent Reidy, the New York Public Library’s director for the research libraries who led the search for Schantz’s replacement, said that the library had received dozens of applications, but that Pereira stood “head and shoulders” above the other candidates.She had a track record, he said, of innovation. During her eight years at the Playwrights Realm, the organization became a leader in the field of offering caretaker support to audiences and theater workers, which included matinees with free child care and stipends for employees with caretaking responsibilities of both children and adult dependents. She has produced nine Off Broadway premieres, including Sarah DeLappe’s play “The Wolves,” which was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for drama.In 2017, Pereira co-founded the Artists’ Anti-Racist Coalition, a grass-roots group working to make the theater industry more diverse.“It’s clear that she has dedicated her career in the performing arts to engaging the public, increasing access and focusing on how to make more people part of the theater community,” Reidy said.The performing arts library, located in Lincoln Center, is one of the New York Public Library’s four research divisions, with a collection that includes not only books, but also manuscripts, photographs, scores, sheet music, stage designs, costume designs, video and film.Among its collections are its expansive archive of recorded sound, which includes symphonic recordings, radio plays, political speeches, and its Theater on Film and Tape Archive, which includes more than 8,000 recordings of Broadway, Off Broadway and regional theater productions, such as a filmed performance by the original Broadway cast of “The Phantom of the Opera.” (The archive, which has led to similar efforts at other institutions, received a special Tony Award in 2001.)Pereira, who was born in Brazil, was a classmate of Lin-Manuel Miranda at Wesleyan University, a liberal arts college in Connecticut, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in theater. She later earned a master’s degree in theater management from the Yale School of Drama. She previously worked as a commercial theater producer, including on the Broadway premiere of “Grace,” which starred Paul Rudd, Michael Shannon and Ed Asner, in 2012, and the Olivier Award-winning revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along” in the West End in 2013.She said she had made frequent use of the library’s holdings over the years. And now, she said, her goal is to tell others about the “undiscovered jewel” on the Upper West Side.“I want to show people that this incredible archive is open to all, not just researchers,” she said. More

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      in Music

      How a Jay-Z Exhibit Took Over the Brooklyn Public Library

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      “The Book of Hov,” an elaborate summer exhibition at the borough’s main branch, was quietly conceived by his team as a surprise tribute that opens Friday.Earlier this week, when passages of Jay-Z lyrics from songs like “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)” and “Justify My Thug” appeared on the Art Deco-style, curved limestone facade of the Brooklyn Public Library’s main branch, fans and passers-by could only speculate on the occasion for the building’s sudden makeover. A surprise concert for the rapper’s home borough? A tribute to the 50th anniversary of hip-hop this summer?The answer, it turned out, was neither — and also a secret even from the man himself.On Thursday evening, when Jay-Z entered the library for a private event surrounded by an inner circle of family, friends and business associates, he was greeted by his live band playing instrumental versions of his hits out front, and a career-spanning archival exhibition that he never asked for inside.Jay-Z learned about the exhibition at a private event held at the library on Thursday night.Simbarashe Cha for The New York Times“I know he wouldn’t let us do this,” said Desiree Perez, the chief executive of Jay-Z’s entertainment empire Roc Nation, about keeping such elaborate plans from the boss. “This could never happen if he was involved.”Featuring artwork, music, memorabilia, ephemera and large-scale recreations of touchstones from a sprawling career, “The Book of Hov,” which will run through the summer, might seem more at home at the Brooklyn Museum down the block. But by installing the showcase across eight zones of a functioning library, its architects are aiming to bring aspirational celebrity extravagance to a free public haven just a few miles from the Marcy Houses where Jay-Z grew up.“Jay belongs to the people,” Perez said. “It’s a place that feels comfortable. It’s not intimidating. A lot of people go to the museum, but a lot of people don’t.”Nicola Yeoman and Dan Tobin Smith’s mash-up of instruments that was photographed for the “Blueprint 3” cover.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesA Gucci jacket tied to the release of Jay-Z’s 2010 memoir, “Decoded.”Amir Hamja/The New York TimesA mural by Jazz Grant made of hand-cut and scanned imagery from Jay-Z’s archives.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesOnly the debut on Thursday was meant to be exclusive. Following a private tour through his own memories, Jay-Z made himself scarce when the tightly controlled doors opened, content to leave the V.I.P. guests among representations of his many likenesses, from Mafioso M.C. to boardroom mogul to social justice string-puller.Even his elusive wife, Beyoncé, mingled more, at least momentarily, as crowds gathered outside to catch glimpses of the Jay-Z extended universe — athletes like Jayson Tatum and Robinson Cano; the musicians Lil Uzi Vert, DJ Khaled and Questlove; the director Josh Safdie and the businessman Michael Rubin.By Friday, when the exhibit opens to the masses, the hors d’oeuvres and passed drinks — Jay-Z’s brands, naturally — would be gone. But remaining among the stacks are statues, sneakers, paintings, platinum plaques, trophies and news clippings tied to Jay-Z’s 13 albums and the companies he founded, including Rocawear and Tidal.The library had initially pitched Jay-Z as an honoree for its annual fund-raising gala. But when its chief executive, Linda E. Johnson — the wife of another Jay-Z ally, the developer Bruce Ratner — floated the idea to Perez of Roc Nation, the pair pivoted.One area of the library features playable turntables and vinyl representing the samples used across Jay-Z’s catalog.Amir Hamja/The New York Times“I just asked her, ‘How big is the library?’” Perez recalled. “And when she said 350,000 square feet, I couldn’t believe it.”Throughout the pandemic, Perez and Roc Nation had been plotting to display artifacts that conveyed Jay-Z’s influence across music, business and broader culture, including the pallets’ worth of master recordings he had regained ownership of over the years.“That archive belongs in Brooklyn,” said Johnson, who oversaw the merger of the Brooklyn Public Library and Brooklyn Historical Society.Together, the teams began planning “The Book of Hov” in January, tapping the production designers Bruce and Shelley Rodgers, Emmy-winning veterans of the Super Bowl halftime show, as well as the creative agency General Idea to conceive and execute the elaborate project.It wasn’t just displaying memorabilia. Beyond the library’s main atrium, beneath an enormous Jay-Z collage, now sits a full-scale replica of the main room from Baseline Recording Studios, where Jay-Z created some of his best-known songs. Every detail had to be correct, down to the TV size and the tub of Dum Dums on the counter.A full-scale recreation of the main room from Baseline Recording Studios, where Jay-Z created some of his most famous songs.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesA reel-to-reel machine in the replica of Baseline Studios.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesA Betacam master tape of the song “99 Problems.”Amir Hamja/The New York Times“They had the wrong couch, the wrong soundboard,” said Juan Perez, a Roc Nation executive and longtime friend of Jay-Z’s, who designed the original studio and gave plenty of notes for the recreation.Another area of the library features playable turntables and vinyl representing the samples used across Jay-Z’s catalog, surrounded by the encased tape reels, floppy disks and CDs containing his original music.Bruce Rodgers, the production designer now working on his 18th Super Bowl halftime show, called the project “probably the most intense installation I’ve ever been involved in,” adding: “We didn’t want to interrupt the normal workings of the library, but we wanted to make a statement.” That included flying in “ninjas” from the West Coast who could rappel up and down the building to install the lyrical facade in time.An area of the exhibition designed for children to make paper planes.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesThe paper plane is a Roc Nation logo attached to an inspirational motto.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesPart of the exhibition is dedicated to Jay-Z’s philanthropy and social justice work, as well as his various businesses.Amir Hamja/The New York Times“People thought I was a little out of my mind,” Johnson, the library executive, said. “I don’t think I’d be going out on a limb to say that this is the biggest exhibition we’ve ever done.”While the valuables will require additional security, Brooklyn Public Library was not paying for any of the production for the show, she added. “Roc Nation is doing a lot for us financially,” Johnson said, including a substantial donation tied to the gala in October, when Jay-Z and his mother, Gloria Carter, will be honored.In the meantime, Jay-Z will also be helping, perhaps unwittingly, with sign-ups. In addition to the draw of the exhibition itself, the library is producing 13 limited-edition library card variations featuring its homegrown star — one for each album.“I’m concerned about crowds,” Johnson said, conveying equal parts trepidation and excitement. “We’ll run out, I suspect.” More

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      in Movies

      ‘Umberto Eco’ Review: Remembering a Literary Explorer

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      A new documentary delves into the infectious curiosity and passions of the Italian scholar and author of “The Name of the Rose.”“To be intellectually curious is to be alive,” Umberto Eco once said. The Italian thinker, who died in 2016, was a professor, a novelist — who wrote, most notably and at one time inescapably, “The Name of the Rose” — a semiotician, a columnist and a connoisseur of arcana. He also conveyed a twinkling sense of fun around reading and thinking about the world and literature, a notion that erudition could be not just edifying but entertaining.“Umberto Eco: A Library of the World” celebrates the man and his many bookshelves, but it’s his symbolic appeal that comes across above all. Davide Ferrario’s documentary front-loads the physicality of books, with drooling pans of libraries from Turin, Italy, to Tianjin, China, before easing into Eco’s eclectic interests, with clips of him dispensing aperçus and quips about memory and the noise of modernity.Eco’s passion for the literary canon is clear, but we hear more about his wanderings through his favorite oddities, such as Athanasius Kircher, a 17th-century Jesuit scholar who wrote sprawling and sometimes wrongheaded treatises. Well-intentioned dramatic readings from Eco’s writings are punctuated with fond anecdotes from his children and a grandson that burnish the image of Eco as the extravagant scholar. His love of arcana supplies an outward eccentricity that seems to interest the film more than his semiotic work or political commentary (in which he was a critic of Silvio Berlusconi since the 1990s).Eco’s 1980 debut novel, “The Name of the Rose,” a murder mystery set in a 14th-century monastery, became a surprise runaway success. Eco neatly describes the appeal of such detective-style investigation as being essentially spiritual, asking, who is behind all this?; he’d continue with more esoteric adventures like “Foucault’s Pendulum” (1988). Throughout his work, the frisson of fiction and its assorted deceptions attracted Eco, from speculative travelogues to the phenomenon of lying.Viewers (and readers) of a certain age may come away wondering whether Eco’s profile has faded somewhat. Ferrario’s documentary presents a figure who feels more firmly European than international, not to mention old-fashioned. (He was definitely a guy who liked to explain his scorn for his cellphone.) But exploring fictional worlds with Eco for a guide remains a diverting and often enlightening pursuit.Umberto Eco: A Library of the WorldNot Rated. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Music

      Super Mario Bros. and Daddy Yankee Added to Recording Registry

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      The Library of Congress has designated 25 recordings, including Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” as “audio treasures worthy of preservation for all time.”Super Mario Bros. are currently ruling the box office. Now, they have also been designated an unlikely national treasure by no less than the Library of Congress.The composer Koji Kondo’s 1985 theme for the video game is among the 25 recordings just added to the National Recording Registry, joining Madonna’s 1984 album “Like a Virgin,” Daddy Yankee’s 2004 hit “Gasolina” and some of the earliest known mariachi recordings as “audio treasures worthy of preservation for all time.”The registry, created in 2000, designates recordings that are “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant,” and are at least 10 years old. This year’s entries were selected from more than 1,100 nominees submitted by the public. They bring the total number of titles on the registry to 625 — a tiny but elite slice of the nearly 4 million songs, speeches, radio broadcasts, podcasts and other recorded sounds in the library’s collection.This is the first time a video game soundtrack has been selected, according to the library. In the decades since the game’s release, Kondo’s “jaunty, Latin-influenced melody” (as the library describes it, calling it “the perfect accompaniment to Mario and Luigi’s side scrolling hijinks”) may have been driven permanently, or perhaps annoyingly, into the collective brain.But its creator remains relatively unknown. Kondo, who was born and raised in Japan, wrote the ditty — officially known as “Ground Theme” — in the 1980s, after seeing a recruiting flyer from Nintendo on a university bulletin board in Osaka.In a statement, Kondo, 61, who still works for Nintendo, said he was delighted by the designation. “Having this music preserved alongside so many other classic songs is such a great honor,” he said. “It’s actually a little difficult to believe.”And its significance, according to the library, goes far beyond the song itself, which was inspired in part by the music of the Japanese jazz fusion band T-Square. According to the library, Kondo’s soundtrack “helped establish the game’s legendary status and proved that the five-channel Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) sound chip was capable of a vast musical complexity and creativity.”This year’s list is heavy on familiar pop hits, including Madonna’s 1984 album, “Like a Virgin.”Library of CongressThis year’s list is heavy on familiar pop hits, including Led Zeppelin’s single “Stairway to Heaven,” Queen Latifah’s album “All Hail the Queen,” Mariah Carey’s single “All I Want for Christmas is You,” Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville,” and John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”Many are deemed significant not just for their musical contribution, but for the broader cultural shifts they exemplify. With “Gasolina,” the first reggaeton recording on the registry, the library notes that its “aural dominance” ushered in “a full reggaeton explosion and even saw various radio stations switching their formats,” including some from English to Spanish.The earliest item added to the registry is “The Very First Mariachi Recordings,” a compilation of recordings (including “The Parakeet”) made in 1907-9 by a group from the rural state of Jalisco, Mexico. The four musicians, led by the vihuela player Justo Villa, are credited with having introduced the style of music to the capital city — and eventually the world — a few years earlier.The most recent is the Northwest Chamber Orchestra’s recording, released in 2012, of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s “Concerto for Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra,” which was inspired by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.The registry also includes some spoken-word recordings. The journalist Dorothy Thompson’s radio commentaries on “the European situation,” made between Aug. 23 and Sept. 6, 1939, are cited as a “unique broadcast record” of the period right before the outbreak of World War II.The library’s list also recognizes Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot,” a short 1994 recording of him explaining the ideas behind his book of the same title. It was inspired by a famous photograph of the Earth taken by the space probe Voyager 1 during its final mission, which Sagan describes as revealing how the Earth was “a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos.” More