Digitally Mapping the Transmission of Music in Nineteenth-Century Binders' Volumes
In the tradition of scrapbooks and albums, a form of collecting practiced with increasing frequency by young women in nineteenth-century America was that of assembling binders’ volumes of sheet music. Although a few scholars have considered the social function of the music within binders’ volumes, far more issues have yet to be discussed, including the widespread dissemination of music through both sales and gifting. The Library of Congress holds 280 complete volumes assembled by 172 individuals. This paper mines locational metadata representing over 10,000 pieces of sheet music contained in these binders’ volumes to map the transmission of nineteenth-century sheet music in the United States using geolocation tools.
Through the application of digital humanities tools along with more traditional musicological methods, I contextualize the dissemination of nineteenth-century binders’ volumes from both cultural and commercial perspectives, analyzing publishers’ and distributors’ stamps with geolocation tools to track the movement of individual pieces in a binder’s volume from the publishers to their owners. These stamps are particularly intriguing when they indicate trade routes between established East Coast publishers and a growing market for music in Ohio and Illinois or an East Coast distributor of European music. Used in tandem with an analysis of physical evidence in music volumes, correspondence, and diaries, digital mapping tools aid in the understanding of sheet music transmission and dissemination in the nineteenth century through these carefully cultivated binders’ volumes.
In the tradition of scrapbooks and albums, a form of collecting practiced with increasing frequency by young women in nineteenth-century America was that of assembling binders’ volumes of sheet music. Although a few scholars have considered the social function of the music within binders’ volumes, far more issues have yet to be discussed, including the widespread dissemination of music through both sales and gifting. The Library of Congress holds 280 complete volumes assembled by 172 individuals. This paper mines locational metadata representing over 10,000 pieces of sheet music contained in these binders’ volumes to map the transmission of nineteenth-century sheet music in the United States using geolocation tools.
Through the application of digital humanities tools along with more traditional musicological methods, I contextualize the dissemination of nineteenth-century binders’ volumes from both cultural and commercial perspectives, analyzing publishers’ and distributors’ stamps with geolocation tools to track the movement of individual pieces in a binder’s volume from the publishers to their owners. These stamps are particularly intriguing when they indicate trade routes between established East Coast publishers and a growing market for music in Ohio and Illinois or an East Coast distributor of European music. Used in tandem with an analysis of physical evidence in music volumes, correspondence, and diaries, digital mapping tools aid in the understanding of sheet music transmission and dissemination in the nineteenth century through these carefully cultivated binders’ volumes.
