Music Division

The Clements has an excellent collection of early American music, including sacred music in tune books, hymnals, and instructional books, and secular music in slip ballads, songsters, and sheet music printed before 1826. The Library has numerous books dealing with various aspects of American music -- performance, publishing, education, philosophy and aesthetics, history and criticism, the music of African-Americans, Native Americans, and music bibliography. Music was routinely printed in popular American magazines in the late 18th and 19th centuries. The Clements has a large number of these periodicals, including journals specializing in music.

In the late 1970s, the Clements acquired a large portion of the Edison Phonograph Company archive, 30,000 pieces of 19th-century sheet music through the gift of Bly Corning. Subsequently, the Library's Corning Sheet Music Collection has been organized and re-defined. Today it contains approximately 16,500 individual pieces and 40 bound volumes of music published between 1826 and 1945. The balance of the Edison archive was transfered to the collections of the University of Michigan School of Music.

Arrangement of the Music collections

• Illustrated music has been arranged by date and alphabetically by composer or title. Cover illustrations are catalogued by subject, artists, lithographer, and publisher.

• Most non-illustrated music was transfered to the University of Michigan School of Music, with the following exceptions:
  1. Music by important American composers
  2. Famous songs
  3. Music with lyrics valuable for research in American social history, particularly songs relating to the Mexican War, Civil War, or Spanish-American War, minstrel music, comic, patriotic, romantic, and holiday songs
  4. Music that contains dancing instructions
  5. Music associated with specific performers
  6. Music with important graphic design
  7. Music with significant imprint information

Reference inquiries

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