During the 19th and early 20th centuries, sheet music was produced in enormous quantities in the United States. To historians and other interested parties, much of this material serves as a way to look at social and cultural mores of the times. This digital collection from Brown University takes a look at the sheet music that reflected attitudes towards African-Americans. Containing several...

Duke University's Historic American Sheet Music Project (HASM) presents digital images of 3,042 pieces of sheet music from Duke's collections, published between 1850 and 1920. Highlights of the collection include "antebellum Southern music, Confederate imprints, and Civil war songs." The search capabilities at the site are sophisticated, allowing users to look for music by publisher name,...

The online collections and exhibits prepared by the Library of Congress are generally considered authoritative and of excellent quality, and this new archive prepared by the Music Division within the Library of Congress is no exception. Containing over 62,500 pieces of historical sheet music, this archive is searchable by author, subject, and song title. Clicking on a particular work will allow...

American Sheet Music, 1870-1885 is an addition to the American Memory Collection of digitized historical materials at the Library of Congress. In 1870, the US Congress passed copyright legislation that required the deposit of one copy of any copyrighted work at the Library of Congress. As a result, thousands of pieces of music were sent to the Library of Congress, and in 1896, the Library...

An alumnus of Johns Hopkins University, Lester S. Levy had a profound love of music and, in 1976, presented his collection of over 29,000 pieces of sheet music to the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at his alma mater. Spanning from 1780 to 1980, the collection is especially strong in music related to military conflicts, the circus, and minstrels. The staff at the Eisenhower Library have devoted a...

With a dramatic geological flourish, the cover of the music for the 1890 song, "Alice's reverie" features an exploding volcano. Interestingly enough, the volcano is not spewing forth lava or ash, but rather what appears to be sheet music, direct to the waiting hands of delighted onlookers. This sheet music for this tune, along with 9000 others, can be found at this website, which was created by...