Illustrated Sheet Music in the U.S., 1830-1930

Illustrated sheet music was one of the most democratic forms of visual imagery in the U.S., owned by millions of Americans who were wooed by compelling lithographic covers, displayed the material culture in their parlors, 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 includes 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 private collection has 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.>

Auteur

Theresa Leininger-Miller is Professor of Art History at University of Cincinnati, USA.

Kenneth Hartvigsen is Assistant Professor of Art History at Brigham Young University, USA.

Texte du rabat

"A dynamic group of art historians explores intricacies of the most democratic form of visual imagery in the U.S., illustrated sheet music, owned by millions of Americans who were wooed by compelling lithographic covers, displayed the material culture in their parlors, and performed compositions on home pianos"--

Contenu

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