| ISBN13: | 9781350450011 |
| ISBN10: | 1350450014 |
| Binding: | Hardback |
| No. of pages: | pages |
| Size: | 234x156 mm |
| Language: | English |
| Illustrations: | 161 colour illus |
| 700 |
Illustrated Sheet Music in the U.S., 1830-1930
GBP 90.00
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Illustrated sheet music was one of the most democratic forms of visual imagery in the U.S., owned by millions of Americans wooed by compelling lithographic covers, who displayed and performed compositions on home pianos.
Advancements in printing technologies in the 19th century, together with an emergent commercial system that facilitated the publication and broad distribution of popular music, led to a surge of elaborately illustrated sheet music. This book features essays by cutting-edge scholars who analyze the remarkable images that persuaded U.S. citizens to purchase mass-produced compositions for both personal and social pleasure. With some songs selling millions of copies as printed musical scores, music publishers commissioned artists to draw every conceivable subject as promotional illustrations, including genre scenes, portraits, political and historical events, sentimental allegories, flowers, landscapes, commercial buildings, and maritime views.
As ubiquitous and democratic material culture, this imagery affected ordinary people in far greater ways than unique objects, like paintings and sculpture, possibly could. The pictures, many in saturated color with bold graphics, still intrigue, amaze, and amuse viewers today with their originality, skill, and content.
Rooted in visual analysis, topics in this collection include perennially significant themes: race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, politics, war, patriotism, propaganda, religion, transportation, regional centers of production, technology, Reconstruction, romance, and comedy, as well as bodies of work by specific illustrators and lithographic firms. In recognizing the role that individuals have played in preserving these remarkable objects, it also features interviews with enthusiasts who own two of the largest private collections of sheet music in the U.S.
1830-1900
1. "Viral Pictures and Network Artistry in U.S. Sheet Music Illustration" [1820s-70s] Erin Pauwels, Temple University
2. "The First Golden Age of Illustration in America" [1840s] Kevin Lynch, The Lynch Archive
3. "Fitz Henry Lane and Illustrations for Sheet Music" [1833-1841] Georgia Barnhill, Center for Historic American Visual Culture, American Antiquarian Society
4. "Sounding the Spa: The Illustrated Parlor Music of Tourism, 1850-1870" Alexandra Cade, University of Delaware
5. "We Three Kings: The Magi in an Illustrated Christmas Carol from 1865" Paul Kaplan, State University of New York, Purchase
6. "The Case of "Reconstruction! Grand March;" Horrifying Pictures, Racial Hybridity, and the Visual Modalities of American Song" [1868] Kenneth Hartvigsen, Brigham Young University,
7. "Depictions of African Americans and the South in the Sheet Music of Blind Tom and Blind Boone" [1860-1913] Rebecca Bush, The Columbus Museum
8. "Who Would Doubt That I'm a Man?": The New Woman: March and Two-Step" [1895] Erin Smith, Case Western Reserve University
1900-1930
9. "Sheet Music and Blackface Minstrelsy in the U.S. Artists' Colony in Paris, ca. 1900" Emily Burns, University of Oklahoma
10. "Class, Race, Image, and Sound in Sheet Music from the Louisiana Purchase Exposition" [1904] Karen Olson, St. Olaf College
11. "Rust Belt Alley: Cleveland as Sheet Music Nexus" [1890s-1930s] Daniel Goldmark, Case Western Reserve University
12. "The Visual Culture of Italian Immigrant Sheet Music (1907-1941)" Rosangela Briscese and Joseph Sciorra, Queens College
13. "Dance, Dining, and Urban Social Life in "Too Much Mustard" and Its Responses" [1913] Sophie Benn, Butler University
14. "Choosing Illustrations to Mediate Gender in Estelle Philleo's Setting the West to Music" [1917-1925] Laurie Sampsel and Donald Puscher, University of Colorado at Boulder
15. ""If You Don't Get It, Tain't No Fault of Mine:" Illustrated Sheet music by Albert Alexander Smith in New York and Paris, 1919-1925" Theresa Leininger-Miller, University of Cincinnati
16. "Alterity and Antiquarianism in the Illustrated Sheet Music of the Shriners" [1895-1930] Jaclynne Kerner, State University of New York, New Paltz
