RAMble, the University Libraries' blog

Books & Bites: “Edible Folios Contest”, an Edible Book Festival

By Jenna Bossert

“If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting; the appetite may sicken, and so die.” – Twelfth Night

Love’s labor was not lost at a recent event, “Edible Folios: Cakes and Confections Contest” hosted by our Special Collections and University Libraries here at West Chester    University (WCU). In this case, love’s labor means dessert. Instead, they were savored by members of the WCU community.

Students, staff, and faculty came together for this “Edible Folios” event on April 11. This event was loosely based on the library tradition of Edible Book Festivals, where communities make treats inspired by literary works and judges evaluate them before everyone gets to celebrate by eating the contest submissions (a bunch of tasty treats)!

We tied our Edible Book Festival event into Special Collection’s A Great Variety of Readers exhibition and the Fortnight of Festivities programming happening at our University Libraries and on campus. Because of this, we required all submissions to be Shakespeare inspired. The rules were minimal: submissions had to be Shakespeare inspired or themed in some manner, the submissions had to be edible, each baker could only submit up to two desserts, and of course, the submissions needed to be delivered by the day of the event. The winners of the contest for first and second place would receive a $100 and $50 gift card respectively, as well as some WCU swag. We expected creativity and tasty treats, and our bakers definitely delivered on that!

Our event had six bakers participating, including WCU students Ania Hawkins-Williams, Lauren Leever, and Ally Magerr, and WCU employees, Kelli Billings, Jenna Bossert, and Bridget Voltz. WCU employees Ainsley Hume, Bobby Kirkner, and Kelly Shea agreed to be our judges for the event. There were seven submissions, and our three judges had a difficult task ahead of them – to try the desserts before everyone else AND evaluate them. The judges rated submissions based on the following criteria: originality and creativity, skill and construction, visual appeal, and tie-in with the literary work being depicted.

The desserts in question include the following:

• French Vanilla Cake (Ania Hawkins-Williams)
• Yellow cake with buttercream frosting and confetti sprinkles (Lauren Leever)
• Rosewater cupcakes with raspberry filling and cream cheese frosting (Ally Magerr)
• Blueberry muffins (Kelli Billings)
• Matcha chocolate chip cookies and double chocolate cake with a sugar cookie skull (Jenna Bossert)
• Mossy velvet cake/cupcakes with marshmallow buttercream (Bridget Voltz)

The judges said they had a very tough choice as all the desserts were very good! In first place, Bridget Voltz won with her “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” cupcakes. Ally Magerr won second place with her “A Rose by Any Other Name” rosewater cupcakes with raspberry filling and cream cheese frosting. Shortly after, WCU community members got in line to try the treats themselves.

The winners from left to right: Ally Magerr (2nd place) and Bridget Voltz (1st place) | Members of the WCU community choosing what to try.

To learn more about what inspired this event, please watch the following video from 6abc News about Special Collections’ A Great Variety of Readers exhibition below and visit the Fortnight of Festivities website.

We’ve got some fun events and a book display to celebrate Earth Day this month! This Friday, April 21st, we’ll be hosting a paper-making workshop and celebrating the official launch of our Bicycle Lending Library!

At the Paper-Making Workshop, we’ll take the recycled and shredded paper from the libraries, soak it, and mold it into paper with seeds so that you can plant the paper when you’re done! At the same time, we will also be having a launch party for our Bicycle Lending Library. Stop by to enjoy some treats and learn more about the program! Both events will be held from 2-4 pm in the library's loading dock.

Also, check out our Earth Day book display featuring books like:

    Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter  | by Ben Goldfarb

     READ IT HERE

      Lab Girl | by Hope Jahren

       READ IT HERE

Celebrating Shakespeare in Music

By Liz Wegeman, Presser Music Library Intern 

The works of Shakespeare have had an exponential influence on the literary tradition – creating timeless pieces still relevant four-hundred years after their creation. Shakespeare’s inventive nature lent itself to the comic and the drama, depicting horror, love, and tragedy in equal parts. Shakespeare’s diversity of expression has left a persistent influence not just in literature but in music too. From Purcell to Bernstein, composers have found his messages powerful and worthy of song. 

In honor of the four-hundred-year celebration of Shakespeare’s first folios, this blog will look at some of the finest music in the Western tradition drawn from Shakespeare’s imaginative worlds. 

Henry Purcell (1659-1695) was a vital figure of the English Baroque and writer of the first opera set to English text, the infamous and oft-studied Dido and Aeneas. His later work, The Fairy Queen (1692), is a semi-opera based on The Midsummer Night’s Dream. Related to the play’s action in a metaphorical sense, it includes allegorical figures and symbolism to William and Mary, then king and queen of England, including the use of orange trees as props (William being the Prince of Orange). The music concentrates on the fairy scene and is connected tangentially to the drama. Several arias, including “The Plaint,” have found a deserved place in the recital repertory. 

To the 19th-century composer, Shakespeare’s comedic plays embodied a dream world that could manifest sonically as strongly as a literary depiction. Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream overture (1826) is a concert overture, a Romantic era genre ripe with programmatic and visual imagery. The overture is a light and capricious scherzando (playful music) with vivid scoring, leading us into a dream world of Shakespeare’s characters – complete with dancing fairies and even braying music depicting Bottom. You can listen to Mendelssohn’s whimsical sonic depictions of Puck, Lysander, and the rest of the merry crew on Classical Music Library, one of the Libraries’ online streaming music databases. 

Fast forward to the mid Twentieth century, and Finnish composer Jean Sibelius depicts a much different sonic interpretation of Shakespeare through the stormy stratosphere of The Tempest, op—109 (1925-26). Incidental music (background music to play in tandem with the play) written for Shakespeare’s famous play of the same name, it is amongst Sibelius’s finest and his last works as well (wedged between the 7th Symphony (1924) and Tapiola (1926)). The music depicts the supernatural and dramatic world of the play, opening with sonic imagery of the famous storm declared by conductor Henry Wood as “the single most onomatopoetic stretch of music ever composed.” The composition is rich in instrumental color, with Sibelius representing individual characters through instrumentation, such as harps and percussion, to capture Prospero’s mysterious and ambiguous nature. 

Listen to Sibelius’s The Tempest here, on Classical Music Library. 

Leonard Bernstein’s musical West Side Story (1957) is more than well-known, and despite its decades-long existence, it is perhaps as popular as it was at its premiere as it is in the modern decade. Based on Romeo and Juliet, it is a contemporary classic that takes the Renaissance into the twentieth century – depicting rivaling street gangs to stand in for the Montagues and Capulets. Since the beloved 1961 film rendition, it has more recently hit the big screen with the 2021 re-make. 

Click here to listen to one of the musical’s most charming numbers, “Maria.” 

Celebrating 400 Years of Shakespeare's First Folio

by Emily Hart

This year marks the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's first folio! The folio is a collection of Shakespeare’s plays, including well-known tragedies such as Hamlet or Macbeth and various other famous comedies and histories. After Shakespeare’s passing in 1616, friends of Shakespeare compiled an anthology of his written works to have published. With only 240 copies known to have survived till 2023, West Chester University is proud to celebrate this milestone with its own folio!
 

“To mark the First Folio’s milestone birthday, faculty from F.H.G. Library’s Special Collections, Department of Theater and Dance, WCU’s Poetry Center, and the Department of English have been planning a semester-long, highly interdisciplinary celebration, culminating in a Fortnight of Festivities that will run from 10 April through 23 April 2023. Talks on Shakespeare’s legacy in Philadelphia, exhibitions of the Folios, and more will pave the way for this two-week concentration of activities, performances, and talks.”
(https://www.wcupa.edu/arts/shakespeare-fortnight/about-fortnight.aspx)
 

Check Out These Events

On April 10th, there will be an opening exhibition at 12pm, with a Sonnet Contest Awards Ceremony at 4pm, followed by a poetry reading at 7pm. A keynote speaker, Dr. Claire M. L. Bourne, will be on April 11th at 7pm! More events will follow throughout April, concluding on April 23rd with a free performance of “Twelfth Night” on the Quad at 3pm! Shakespeare’s works are displayed in the F.H.G Library on the second floor. Brush up on your Romeo and Juliet, or enjoy a new Sonnet in preparation for the celebration. West Chester University proudly presents the Fortnite of Festivities and hopes to see you there!

(https://tinyurl.com/WCUFOF)