Sheet Music Collection

The sheet music collection contains several thousand pieces. Its major focus is Washington subjects and composers, however, the collection also includes significant examples of music relating to general topics such as racial stereotypes, women, transportation in all its forms, and social values of the century from 1850 to 1950.

Researchers find the collection useful for a variety of purposes other than for the history of popular music. Pieces are often selected for their graphic covers or the music may be studied for the social messages communicated through the words of a particular song or group of songs.

Additional Information:

Inventions of Note, Lewis Music Library - The Inventions of Note Sheet Music Collection was established in 1997 by the Lewis Music Library at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This sheet music collection consists of popular songs and piano compositions that portray technologies (old and new alike) as revealed through song texts and/or cover art.

Historic American Sheet Music - The Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University holds a significant collection of 19th and early 20th century American sheet music. The Historic American Sheet Music Project provides access to digital images of 3042 pieces from the collection, published in the United States between 1850 and 1920.

Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music - The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music consists of over 29,000 pieces of American popular music. The collection spans the years 1780 to 1980, but its strength is its throrough documentation of nineteenth-century American through popular music.