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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 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.>
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Theresa Leininger-Miller is Professor of Art History at University of Cincinnati, USA. She has curated 8 exhibitions of sheet music; published an exhibition catalogue, a catalogue essay, and three additional essays; given 37 lectures/presentations on the genre; and spoken on radio and TV about the topic.Kenneth Hartvigsen is Assistant Professor of Art History at Brigham Young University, USA. Kenneth wrote his dissertation on sheet music at Boston University, has spoken on it at the Southeastern College Art Association conference, the National Museum of American History, and Smithsonian American Art Museum, and, as American Curator at the Brigham Young Museum of Art, incorporated it into several exhibitions.
