Digital Resources

This page highlights digital collections, online exhibits, recorded lectures, and published blog posts from the Library's collections focused on popular sheet music for voice and piano.

The Music Division has curated many significant digital collections of sheet music for voice and piano.

Baseball Sheet Music
Features 147 items of sheet music that reference baseball from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Many of the items shown represent the earliest widely-distributed baseball collectibles; the value of these objects lies both in their music and lyrics as well as in their elaborately illustrated covers, which furnish a factual and cultural history of our national game, its fans and their heroes.
Civil War Sheet Music Collection
Features over 2,500 pieces culled from the Library's collections. This collection is unique in that it offers a contemporary perspective from both sides of the conflict, unfiltered by generations of historical interpretation.
Early American Sheet Music
The Library of Congress classification number M1.A1 includes music printed or 'copied in manuscript' in the United States or the colonies through 1820. As an early record of musical life in America and the colonies, this classification number holds many interesting popular and topical pieces.
Historic Sheet Music Collection, 1800 to 1922
Features approximately 9,000 items published from 1800 to 1922, although the majority is from 1850 to 1920. The bulk was published in many different cities in the United States, but some of the items bear European imprints.
Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, ca. 1820 to 1860
Features over 15,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the years 1820 to 1860. This collection complements an earlier American Memory project, Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music 1870-1885 as well as the Band Music from the Civil War Era and Sheet Music from the Civil War Era. Included are popular songs, operatic arias, piano music, sacred and secular vocal music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and some music for band and orchestra.
Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, ca. 1870 to 1885
Features over 47,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the years 1870 to 1885. Included are popular songs, piano music, sacred and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra.
Sheet Music of the Musical Theater
Sheet Music of the Musical Theater is a collection of more than 16,000 pieces of sheet music published between 1880 and 1922. These songs, specified as “M1508” items in the Library’s classification system, were taken from musicals, revues and operettas primarily of the American and British stage. They are arranged for piano and voice, sometimes simultaneously in arrangements for lower and higher voice. Composers and lyricists from the famous to the obscure can be found in this collection, and the songs portray the culture and history of more than 100 years ago in unique and valuable ways.
Women's Suffrage in Sheet Music
Features over 200 pieces of sheet music spanning the years 1838-1923, over half of which highlight women's emerging voices and suffrage efforts; the collection includes published rally songs and songsters written and compiled by notable composers and suffragists, as well as music manuscripts submitted for copyright deposit by everyday citizens.
World War I Sheet Music
Features over 14,000 pieces of sheet music relating to what ultimately became known as the First World War, with the greatest number coming from the years of the United States' active involvement (1917-1918) and the immediate postwar period.
Yiddish American Popular Sheet Music
The majority of the selections found here originated in the Yiddish theater, which thrived in the Bowery area of the Lower East Side of New York City from the 1880s into the mid-twentieth century, and which expanded into a network of theaters in Jewish communities around the country. Also found are popular-style arrangements of folk songs and sacred songs as well as instrumental numbers. Some compositions, most notably those of Abe Schwartz, became standards in the field of klezmer music.

Explore past exhibitions online dating back to the 1990s that feature popular sheet music for voice and piano.

Baseball’s Greatest Hits: The Music of Our National Game
This exhibition features baseball sheet music from the collections of the Music Division at the Library of Congress. Most of these works are original copyright deposits and represent only a small fraction of the more than 400 published songs about baseball in the Music Division’s custody. They illustrate the remarkable congruence between the evolution of the sport from before the Civil War to the present, and the musical counterparts that have chronicled in song baseball’s greatest moments.
Voices, Votes, Victory: Presidential Campaign Songs
This exhibition presents a sampling of the rich collection of campaign songs housed in the Music Division of the Library of Congress. From pocket-sized songsters to sheet music, the wide variety of subjects reflect virtually every party platform and national issue on which presidential elections have focused.

Music Division staff have both presented and facilitated lectures on popular sheet music for voice and piano, be it in musicals, vaudeville, Tin Pan Alley, or the 19th century. These lectures have been shared and made available on the Library's website as part of the Event Videos Collection. Some of these lectures are linked below.

Featured Video

This first of a two-part lecture sequence by Ben West, creator of the new documentary musical series "The Show Time! Trilogy," offers an exciting account of the American musical's early female authors, from vaudeville headliner Nora Bayes to legendary hostess Elsa Maxwell. In the first three decades of the 20th century, amidst the climax of the women's suffrage movement and the aural revolutions of ragtime and jazz, these often-overlooked females -- trailblazers, librettists, lyricists, composers -- were instrumental in opening doors for future generations and laying the foundation for an American art form.

Diversity & the Birth of Broadway: Early Black Authors of the American Musical
This second of a two-part lecture sequence by Ben West, creator of the new documentary musical series "The Show Time! Trilogy," offers an exciting account of the American musical's early Black authors. In the first three decades of the 20th century, against a backdrop of segregation, social discord and rampant racism, emerged such seminal figures as Duke Ellington, Bert Williams and Bob Cole. Rich in character and rooted in ragtime and jazz, the groundbreaking work of these African American innovators laid the foundation for both the American popular song and the American musical stage.
Finding New Perspectives on the Germania Musical Society
Nancy Newman presents an American Musicological Society lecture, "A Program Not Greatly to Their Credit": Finding New Perspectives on the Germania Musical Society through the American Memory Sheet Music Collection.
Johnnies, Tommies & Sammies: Music & the WWI Alliance
Musicologists are joined by musicians to explore the contributions of popular songs from the U.S., Canada and Britain to the Allies during World War I. This is the story of the creation of the Allied cultural identity from the distinct contributions of each country.
The Kishineff Massacre & Domestic Musical Practice in America
Drawing on the resources of the Heskes Collection of Yiddish American Sheet Music and the Historic Sheet Music Collection, Randall Goldberg explored the Jewish American musical responses to the Kishineff Pogrom of 1903 in Russia. With a detailed look at Herman Shapiro's "Kishineff Massacre" and other works, Goldberg's talk contextualizes American artistic contributions following this awful event, which served as a catalyst for Jewish activism in the 20th century. Presented in association with the American Musicological Society.
My Irish Song of Songs
Janet McKinney explores Irish-American identity in popular song and musical theater, as evidenced in the sheet music and recording collections at the Library of Congress.
World War I Sheet Music at the Library of Congress
Paul Fraunfelter explores the historical and sociological perspectives of World War I-era commercially & privately published, vanity press and manuscript songs, which are available online. Presented in association with the exhibitions, "World War I: American Artists View the Great War" and "Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I."

In the Muse, the Music Division's blog, includes regular posts that highlight popular sheet music for voice and piano. These blog posts are tagged with the heading "sheet music."

The digital collection The Library of Congress Celebrates the Songs of America also includes many short articles on popular song in America. Browse them by topic within the collection.

Popular Sheet Music for Voice and Piano: A Guide to Resources at the Library of Congress

Performing Arts: Ask a Librarian

Digital Resources

Featured Video