Sentence and Workspace of the Day

The workspace: security desk at Paine Hall during an awesomely scary-sounding new music concert

The sentence(s):


The position of college songbooks on the shelves of Harvard’s Loeb Music Library is itself rather suggestive; two shelves of songbooks (Mus 560x) are located directly between the anthems and marches of various national traditions (Mus 540 – 559), and several collections of sea shanties and work songs (Mus 569). This juxtaposition neatly captures the territory occupied by a college song—it incites and focuses the crowd’s fervor in the same way that a work song establishes and regulates the rhythm of rowing or other repetitive group activity; and it signifies and strengthens a communities and traditions.[1]

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[1] Ironically, another tiny themed collection was discovered upon closer inspection during a later library excursion: half a dozen pocket-sized “temperance songbooks,” wedged between the musics of two presumably hard-drinking populations: students and sailors.