19th Century American Sheet Music Digitization Project

This project provides web access, through digital scanning and descriptive indexing, to a unique collection of rare American music material in the UNC-CH Music Library. The 19th-Century American Sheet Music Digitization Project was funded through an Instructional Technology Grant from Chancellor Michael Hooker. 57 volumes (approximately 2250 titles) of sheet music have been indexed. The contents of 32 of these volumes (approximately 1200 pieces) have been fully scanned and are available on this website.

 

19th Century California Sheet Music

From the University of California, Berkeley, this collection contains over 2,700 pieces of sheet music published in California between 1852-1900.

 

African-American Sheet Music

Selected from the Sheet Music Collection at the John Hay Library at Brown University. Consists of 1,305 pieces of American-American sheet music dating from 1850 through 1920. Includes many songs from the heyday of antebellum black face minstrelsy in the 1850s and from the abolitionist movement of the same period. Numerous titles are associated with the novel and the play Uncle Tom's Cabin. Civil War period music includes songs about African-American soldiers and the plight of the newly emancipated slave. Post-Civil War music reflects the problems of Reconstruction and the beginnings of urbanization and the northern migration of African Americans. African-American popular composers include James Bland, Ernest Hogan, Bob Cole, James Reese Europe, and Will Marion Cook .

 

America Singing Nineteenth-Century Song Sheets

Not to be confused with sheet music, song sheets are single printed sheets, usually six by eight inches, with lyrics but no music. These were new songs being sung in music halls or new lyrics to familiar songs. Song sheets are an early example of a mass medium and today they offer a unique perspective on the political, social, and economic life of the time, especially during the Civil War. The Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress holds 4291 song sheets. Included among these American songs are ninety-seven British song sheets from Dublin and London. The majority of the song sheets were published from the 1850s to the 1870s. 

 

Archive of Popular American Music

Sheet music and original covers of music from the UCLA Music Library's collection of popular songs originally published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

 

Ashford Sheet Music Collection

Donated by Paul Ashford in 1959, the Ashford Sheet Music Collection contains over a thousand titles.  The collection is centered on Washington State and the Pacific Northwest themed music.

 

Baltic Choral Music Collection

Created by the University of Washington Choral Music Program in partnership with major libraries in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, this collection contains over 700 pieces of Baltic choral music.

 

Center for Popular Music

Holdings include around 73,000 sheet music and broadside items from the late 18th century to the present.  Show music, motion picture music, newspaper music, and confederate sheet music are part of the collection.

 

Charles H. Templeton Ragtime Sheet Music Collection

Collection of American ragtime sheet music from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

 

Five Centuries of Scottish Music

Contains the digital images of scores and concert programs (and some extracts of recordings) for the works of ten Scottish composers, Robert Carver, Sir John of Penicuik Clerk, Hamish MacCunn, John Blackwood McEwen, Edward McGuire, Gordon McPherson, Robin Orr, James Oswald, Francis George Scott, and Ronald Stevenson. Only portions of the pieces are scanned. The scores, programs and recordings form part of the collection of the Scottish Music Information Centre.

 

Florida Sheet Music Collection

Catalog of collection containing 244 pieces of sheet music produced in Florida from the late 19th and entire 20th centuries. For each piece of sheet music this catalog contains the scanned cover art and a description that includes first line of lyrics, title, composer, publisher, date, and no. of pages.

 

Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920

Digital images of 3042 pieces of sheet music published in the United States between 1850 and 1920 selected from the collections in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University. The selection presents a significant perspective on American history and culture. The sheet music chosen for digital reproduction represents a wide variety of music types including bel canto, minstrel songs, protest songs, sentimental songs, patriotic and political songs, plantation songs, Civil War songs, spirituals, dance music, songs from vaudeville and musicals, "Tin pan alley" songs, and songs from World War I. The collection is particularly strong in antebellum Southern music, Confederate imprints, and Civil war songs. Piano music includes marches, variations, opera excerpts, and dance music (waltzes, quadrilles, polkas, etc.).

 

Inventions of Note Sheet Music Collection

This sheet music collection contains approximately 75 pieces of sheet music owned by the Lewis Music Library. The collection consists of popular songs and piano compositions that portray technologies (old and new alike) as revealed through song texts and/or cover art. There are no chronological limits to this collection, although most of the holdings date from approximately 1890-1920. Only music published in the United States is included.

 

Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music

The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music is part of Special Collections at the Milton S. Eisenhower Library of The Johns Hopkins University. It contains over 29,000 pieces of music and focuses on popular American music spanning the period 1780 to 1960. All pieces of the collection are indexed on this site and a search will retrieve a catalog description of the pieces. An image of the cover and each page of music will also be retrieved if the music was published before 1923 and is in the public domain. The collection can be browsed using 38 topical categories or searched by title, composer, lyricist, cover artist, first lines, publisher, etc.

 

Music for the Nation

Over 22,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the post-Civil War era; included are popular songs, piano music, sacred music and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra. Offered as part of the American Memory online resource compiled by the National Digital Library Program of the Library of Congress.

 

Pacific Northwest Sheet Music Collection

The Pacific Northwest Sheet Music Collection began through a donation by Paul Ashford and has quickly expanded to over a thousand titles.  The collection covers music from and about Washington State and the Pacific Northwest as well as other Americana.  The collection is located at the University of Washington Music Library.

 

Performing Arts in American, 1875-1923

"A web site of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts", with visual images drawn from their extensive archival collections. "It presents a searchable database of 16,000 objects representing archival materials from one of the strongest periods in the Performing Arts Library collections."

 

Richard Robinson's Tunebook

Collection of traditional tunes, and new tunes in traditional styles including Scots, Irish, Scandinavian, French, Balkan and more.

 

Sheet Music About Lincoln, Emanicapation, and the Civil War

Online collection of over 200 sheet-music compositions that reflect Lincoln and the Civil War as seen through popular music. The collection, compiled by Alfred Whital Stern (1881-1960), spans the years from the 1859 Lincoln presidential campaign to the centenary of his death in 1909.

 

Sheet Music Consortium

Sheet music from collections held at UCLA, Indiana University, Johns Hopkins University and Duke University.

 

Sheet Music From Canada's Past

Includes over 20,000 patriotic and parlour songs dating back to the 1700's.  All works are Canadian imprints and include music about Canada or Candians.  This site is maintained by the Library and Archives of Canada.

 

University of Colorado at Boulder Digital Sheet Music Collection

Contains around 150,000 sheet music items from the late 18th through 20th centuries.  Items published between 1890 and 1922 have been digitized.

 

Yiddish Sheet Music

Located at Brown University, this collection contains around 2,000 titles centered on Yiddish-language art songs, folk songs, and religious music.