.


William Sidney Mount (American painter, 1807-1868) Dance of the Haymakers 1845


The Irish tradition of "dancing a jig" in the Middle Atlantic was noted by a newspaper reporter in the middle of the century.  In 1848, a reporter for the New York Tribune visited a hotel in Philadelphia's Southwark district where working-class men & women came to drink & dance. When the "old negro fiddler" strikes up a tune in a dancing-room upstairs, the reporter records,

"The dance proceeds for a few minutes in tolerable order; but soon the excitement grows, the dancers begin … accelerating their movements, accompanied with shouts of laughter, yells of encouragement and applause, … Affairs are now at their height. The black fiddler increases the momentum of his elbow and calls out the figure in convulsive efforts to be heard [while] the dancers, now wild with excitement, leap frantically about … and at length conclude the dance in the wildest disorder and confusion. As soon as the parties recover, the fiddler makes his appearance among them and receives from each gentleman a tip as his proportion of the ceremony of 'facing the music,' and the floor is cleared for a new set; and so goes on the night."


William Sidney Mount (American painter, 1807-1868) Right and Left 1850


William Sidney Mount (American painter, 1807-1868) Dancing on the Barn Floor 1831


William Sidney Mount (American painter, 1807-1868) The Banjo Player 1856


William Sidney Mount (American painter, 1807-1868) Rustic Dance After a Sleigh Ride 1830


William Sidney Mount (American painter, 1807-1868) The Bone Player 1856


William Sidney Mount (American painter, 1807-1868) The Breakdown Bar Room Scene 1835


William Sidney Mount (American painter, 1807-1868) The Power of Music 1847


William Sidney Mount (American genre painter, 1807-1868)  The Banjo Player 1856


A truly fine bibliography of Music and Dance in 18th and 19th century America has just been published in Common Place here.  You will need to go to the Common Place site for the wonderful essays that Guest Editors Peter Leavenworth, Nikos Pappas, & Stephen Marini have collected featuring some of the most exciting new work now appearing in American music history.

Databases

Early American Secular Music and Its European Sources, 1589-1839: An Indexhttp://www.colonialdancing.org/Easmes/Index.htm

The Hymn Tune Index. All hymns printed anywhere in the world with English-language texts up to 1820
http://hymntune.library.uiuc.edu/default.asp

Research Centers for American Music

American Music Institute, University of Michigan
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~claguem/ami/

American Music Research Center, University of Colorado, Boulder
http://music.colorado.edu/departments/amrc/

Archive of Popular American Music, University of California, Los Angeles
http://unitproj.library.ucla.edu/music/mlsc/apam.cfm

The Center for American Music, University of Pittsburgh. Holdings at the center include the Foster Hall Collection relating to Stephen Collins Foster
http://www.pitt.edu/~amerimus/cam1.htm

The Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College, Chicago
http://www.cbmr.org/

The Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro
http://popmusic.mtsu.edu/

Hawaiian Collection, University of Hawai'i at Manoa
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~speccoll/hawaii.html

John Jacob Niles Center for American Music, University of Kentucky
http://finearts.uky.edu/music/niles

The Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera, Winterthur, Delaware. Holdings at the center include the Edward Deming Andrews Memorial Shaker Collection; illuminated manuscripts from the Ephrata Cloister, a German Protestant monastic community in east Pennsylvania; and other sacred music copybooks.
http://www.winterthur.org/?p=435

Latin American Music Center, Indiana University, Bloomington
http://music.indiana.edu/lamc/home/

Moravian Music Foundation, an independent archive, library, and performing center dedicated to music of the Unitas Fratum or Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina
http://www.moravianmusic.org/

The Sousa Archives and Center for American Music, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Center devoted to John Philip Sousa and his associates and American band music of the 19th and early 20th century
http://www.library.illinois.edu/sousa/

Wisconsin Music Archives, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Holdings include Wisconsin themed and composed sheet music and recordings from the 1850s to the present.
http://music.library.wisc.edu/wma/

Sheet Music and other Source Documents:

19th-Century American Sheet Music, Music Library—University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
http://www.lib.unc.edu/dc/sheetmusic/

19th-Century California Sheet Music, a virtual library of some 2,700 pieces of sheet music published in California between 1852 and 1900
http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~mkduggan/neh.html

African American Sheet Music, Brown University Library Center for Digital Scholarship
http://library.brown.edu/cds/sheetmusic/afam//index.html

Alabama Sheet Music, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Collection of sheet music by Alabamians, about Alabama, and/or published in the state of Alabama
http://acumen.lib.ua.edu/u0004_0000003

American Popular Print Music Collection: Florida Atlantic University Libraries
http://www.library.fau.edu/depts/spc/spc/printmusic_appm.htm

Archive of Popular Music
http://digital.library.ucla.edu/apam/

The Ashford Sheet Music Collection: University of Washington
http://db.lib.washington.edu/sheetmusic/

Confederate Imprints Collection: Sheet Music, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Sheet music issued from Confederate music publishers
http://acumen.lib.ua.edu/u0004_0000001

Duke University Libraries, Historic American Sheet Music
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/hasm/

E. Azalia Hackley Collection, African American-themed sheet music in the Detroit Public Library
http://www.thehackley.org/about.html

Frances G. Spencer Collection of American Popular Sheet Music, Baylor University
http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/fa-spnc

IN Harmony: Sheet Music from Indiana, a virtual library that features Indiana-related sheet music—sheet music by Indiana composers, arrangers, lyricists or publishers as well as sheet music about the state
http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/inharmony/welcome.do

International Music Score Library Project: Petrucci Music Library, Internet site for the posting of sheet music from Europe, Asia, and America from the Medieval era through the 21st century
http://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page

Iowa Digital Library, The University of Iowa Libraries, Historic Sheet Music, sheet music printed in or relating to Iowa from the 19th and 20th centuries
http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/cdm/search/collection/sheetmusic

The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music, Special Collections at the Sheridan Libraries of The Johns Hopkins University, digital library of American music spanning the 18th through the 20th centuries
http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/

Library Of Congress
American Memory
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/index.html

African-American Sheet Music, 1850-1920
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/sheetmusic/brown/

An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Manuals, ca. 1490-1920
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/dihtml/dihome.html

America Singing: Nineteenth-Century Song Sheets
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amsshtml/amsshome.html

An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and other Printed Ephemera
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/rbpehtml/

American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment 1870-1920
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/vshtml/vshome.html

Band Music from the Civil War Era
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwmhtml/cwmhome.html

Captain Pearl R. Nye: Life on the Ohio and Erie Canal
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/nye/index.html

Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/dcmhtml/dmhome.html

Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/berlhtml/berlhome.html

Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/reed/

Hispano Music & Culture of the Northern Rio Grande: The Juan B. Rael Collection
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/rghtml/rghome.html

Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music 1820-1885
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/mussmhtml/

Performing Arts Encyclopedia
http://www.loc.gov/performingarts/

African-American Band Music & Recordings, 1883-1923
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/stocks/stocks-home.html

Baseball Sheet Music, c. 1850-1930
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/search?query=memberOf:baseball&view=thumbnail&sort=titlesort&label=Baseball%20Sheet%20Music

American Choral Music 1870-c. 1920
http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/choralmusic/choralmusic-home.html

Civil War Sheet Music Collection
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/civilwar/civilwar-home.html

Gilded Age Presidential Campaign Songs
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/search?query=memberOf:campaign&start=0&view=thumbnail&sort=titlesort&label=Presidential%20Campaign%20Songs

Historic Sheet Music Collection, 1800-1922, possibly originating with the recording division of Thomas A. Edison, Inc.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/volcano/volcano-home.html

Home Sweet Home: Life in Nineteenth-Century Ohio
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/ohio/ohio-home.html

The March King: John Philip Sousa
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/sousa/sousa-home.html

Patriotic Melodies
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/patriotic/patriotic-home.html

Music of Old Nebraska, The Polley Music Library in Lincoln, Nebraska. Nebraska-composed music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries
http://polleymusic.lincolnlibraries.org/depts/polley/Music_of_Old_Nebraska_home.htm

Pittsburgh Sheet Music Collection, The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. A collection of sheet music published in Pittsburgh
http://www.carnegielibrary.org/research/music/pittsburgh/sheetmusic/

Shape-Note Tunebooks at the Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative. A collection of hymnals and sacred music collections in Georgia libraries
https://www2.atla.com/digitalresources/results.asp?pagenumber=1&cl1=ALL&keyword=shape+note&title=&description=&subject=

University of Colorado Digital Sheet Music Collection, Colorado and western-themed sheet music of the 19th and 20th centuries
http://libcudl.colorado.edu/sheetmusic/browse.asp?

Wade Hall Collection of Southern History and Culture: Sheet Music, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Collection of Southern and Southern-themed sheet music of the 19th and early 20th centuries
http://acumen.lib.ua.edu/u0004_0000002

Websites Relating to Various Aspects of American Music

African American Spirituals. Religious music traditions of African Americans
http://www.negrospirituals.com/

Blackface Minstrelsy. A popular form of entertainment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that caricatured urban and rural African Americans. Although its roots extend to eighteenth-century Great Britain, the first blackface minstrel troupe, The Virginia Minstrels, formed in New York City. This genre of music was very influential in early country music of the twentieth century.
http://black-face.com/

California Mission Music. Music practiced by the Spanish padres and Native American choirs in the mission churches throughout California
http://www.californiamissionstudies.com/Research/Articles/California_Mission_Music.html

Colonial Music Institute. Website devoted to the practice of colonial music in the English-speaking colonies
http://www.colonialmusic.org/Resource/DHessay.htm

Music of the Shakers. Website devoted to the history of Shaker music with links to recordings
http://www.americanmusicpreservation.com/shakermusic.htm

Shape-Note Singing. Social sacred music singing from The Sacred Harp, a Southern evangelical religious collection of music published originally by two Georgia Baptists, Benjamin Franklin White and Elisha J. King in 1844. Website devoted to Sacred Harp singing as it is currently practiced throughout the United States and abroad.
http://fasola.org/