The Parkway Central Music Department’s getting hip to the celebrations surrounding F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 120th birthday. Visit our mini exhibition featuring printed music from the Free Library’s historic Sheet Music Collection, referenced by Fitzgerald in his novels, plays, and short stories. There are nine pieces of music, primarily popular dances like foxtrots, maxixes, and shimmies that soundtracked the Jazz Age.

Music librarians pulled these titles for the collection Music in the Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Unheard Melodies by Anthony Berret, who made good use of the Music Department for research that led to publication. The fact that he thanks the Free Library, in particular, is the cat’s meow! 

The Library’s historic sheet music collection contains the whole history of music publishing in the U.S., from colonial times to the Jazz Age to today’s hits. Musicians continue to rely on it to play concerts.

For music listeners, we’ve used the Free Library's Jazz Music Library digital media resource to build this playlist of songs from the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, creating a soundtrack to those bleary-eyed nights. Log in with your library card to build your own playlist, listen to ours below, and see some of these songs brought to life in the Music Department.  

And if live music is more your bag, come check out the Mysterious Travelers concert series! Enjoy Najwa Parkins sampling an American Standard classic at our concert from last season (scroll to bottom of blog post for video) and don’t miss a very keen Season Three, starting this month and continuing once a month through May 2017.

Happy Birthday, F. Scott Fitzgerald!