Some background info
I finally got the chance to look through Krohn's book Music publishing in St. Louis (1988) and learn a little more about the St. Louis publishers' names I've been seeing and hearing.
According to Krohn, "The year 1839 may prove to be the initial date for the publication of sheet music in the Middle West, and Nathaniel Phillips will then be regarded as the first publisher" (p. 15).
The big names in the history of sheet music publishing in St. Louis seem to be Phillips, Balmer & Weber, Peters, Compton, Kunkel, and Shattinger. I was also interested to discover that Mel Bay (being a former violin/viola teacher I'm very familiar with that publisher of educational material) is located in Pacific, MO and has been around since the 1840's.
Krohn seemed to be fascinated with plate numbers (a customary way for publishers to keep records of their publications, usually by assigning a number to each publication) - something I need to learn more about.
He also includes an interesting section on "Music and the World's Fair" - the 1904 "Louisiana Purchase Exposition" World's Fair in St. Louis, of course. Not much about music publishing in this section, interestingly enough, but he does list some compositions that were written specifically for the fair (most notably the song "Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis, Meet Me at the Fair" - music by Kerry Mills, words by Andrew B. Sterling), and names many of the performers.
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I found a reference to the following book somewhere and discovered that Gaylord has a copy in the reference section, so I decided to take a quick look at it this weekend while I was there:
The sheet music reference & price guide by Marie-Reine A. Pafik and Anna Marie Guiheen. 2nd ed. Paducah, KY : Collector Books, c1995.
As I expected, it's mainly for collectors. It gives guidelines for how much specific pieces of sheet music (in mint condition) would have been worth in 1995. It seemed like a pretty comprehensive list, but I'm not sure. It was interesting to see the categories the authors used - they organized by song title, cover artist (a very big deal for collectors), performers & composers, and miscellaneous categories. I was interested to see the categories they used (I'll type them all below, for future reference), but I wasn't entirely sure whether they determined these "subjects" based on the song lyrics or just on the cover art. My guess is primarily the cover art, but I guess it could have been some of both. Anyway, here's a list of the misc. categories:
Advertising
Black, black face
Blues
Deco (as in Art Deco)
Dedication
Disney tunes
Dixie
Indian (as in American)
Irish songs
Jazz
Charles A. Lindberg (I was amazed he had his own category - were there really that many songs written about him or that featured him on the cover?)
March
Military Personnel
Patriotic
Political
Pre 1900
Presidents
Ragtime
Red Cross
Salvation Army
Signed (by composer or performer, usually very valuable)
Sports
Titanic
Transportation
World War I
World War II
Hours today: 2
Total hours completed: 10
According to Krohn, "The year 1839 may prove to be the initial date for the publication of sheet music in the Middle West, and Nathaniel Phillips will then be regarded as the first publisher" (p. 15).
The big names in the history of sheet music publishing in St. Louis seem to be Phillips, Balmer & Weber, Peters, Compton, Kunkel, and Shattinger. I was also interested to discover that Mel Bay (being a former violin/viola teacher I'm very familiar with that publisher of educational material) is located in Pacific, MO and has been around since the 1840's.
Krohn seemed to be fascinated with plate numbers (a customary way for publishers to keep records of their publications, usually by assigning a number to each publication) - something I need to learn more about.
He also includes an interesting section on "Music and the World's Fair" - the 1904 "Louisiana Purchase Exposition" World's Fair in St. Louis, of course. Not much about music publishing in this section, interestingly enough, but he does list some compositions that were written specifically for the fair (most notably the song "Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis, Meet Me at the Fair" - music by Kerry Mills, words by Andrew B. Sterling), and names many of the performers.
----------
I found a reference to the following book somewhere and discovered that Gaylord has a copy in the reference section, so I decided to take a quick look at it this weekend while I was there:
The sheet music reference & price guide by Marie-Reine A. Pafik and Anna Marie Guiheen. 2nd ed. Paducah, KY : Collector Books, c1995.
As I expected, it's mainly for collectors. It gives guidelines for how much specific pieces of sheet music (in mint condition) would have been worth in 1995. It seemed like a pretty comprehensive list, but I'm not sure. It was interesting to see the categories the authors used - they organized by song title, cover artist (a very big deal for collectors), performers & composers, and miscellaneous categories. I was interested to see the categories they used (I'll type them all below, for future reference), but I wasn't entirely sure whether they determined these "subjects" based on the song lyrics or just on the cover art. My guess is primarily the cover art, but I guess it could have been some of both. Anyway, here's a list of the misc. categories:
Advertising
Black, black face
Blues
Deco (as in Art Deco)
Dedication
Disney tunes
Dixie
Indian (as in American)
Irish songs
Jazz
Charles A. Lindberg (I was amazed he had his own category - were there really that many songs written about him or that featured him on the cover?)
March
Military Personnel
Patriotic
Political
Pre 1900
Presidents
Ragtime
Red Cross
Salvation Army
Signed (by composer or performer, usually very valuable)
Sports
Titanic
Transportation
World War I
World War II
Hours today: 2
Total hours completed: 10
posted by Amy | 7:10 PM
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