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1829-1899
HGO-01-001-O-I-108
GUSN-181218
Historic New England's collection of sheet music includes illustrations from the following categories or themes: social life, patriotic symbols, courtship and love, sports, games, and amusements, politics, pastoral scenes, family life, entertainers, military, social issues, urban scenes, beauty and fashion, education, death, ships and the sea, religion, and immigrants.
patriotism
courtship
games
recreation
music
religion (discipline)
sheet music
ca. 200 items
EP001
Ephemera collection
EP001.10
sheet music
Urban scenes
Series
HGO-01-001-O-I-108
Published sheet music was available in the United States by about 1788. Early examples did not have illustrated title pages, but eventually they began to be embellished with engravings, sometimes small, and other times covering most of the title page. Engravings were expensive to produce, but the introduction of lithography allowed music publishers to produce illustrated covers more inexpensively. Several well-known artists received their early training in lithographic shops producing sheet music covers. By the 1880s, the quality of illustrations had declined as cheaper printing processes were adopted.
Source: Introduction to Nineteenth Century Pictorial Sheet Music, Boston Athenaeum web site
Historic New England is committed to implementing reparative language description for existing collections and creating respectful and inclusive language description for new collections. If you encounter language in Historic England's Collections Access Portal that is harmful or offensive, or you find materials that would benefit from a content warning, please contact [email protected].
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