Brooklyn Sheet Music Collection

With the oldest piece dating from 1869 and the latest from 1987, the music in the collection spans over a century of social change, from the age of parlor music to rock and hip-hop. Many of the earlier ones, which were written during the days of brass band concerts at the beach, recall a time when pianos and the skills to play them were more common in homes than they are today. These marches, waltzes and polkas are neither profound nor artistically impressive; however, they speak of a powerful connection to the borough that expressed itself in music and found enough popularity to be disseminated in published form. Sheet music, unlike many other published works, can be produced rapidly, allowing for rapid response to events or public interest. The earlier pieces, especially, offer a valuable perspective on local events and public attitudes.

Quite a few of the pieces date from the Tin Pan Alley period of popular music in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and were published by some of the most successful publishers in New York's Tin Pan Alley, such as T. B. Harms, Willis Woodward, M. Witmark, Harry Von Tilzer, and Leo Feist. As the twentieth century progressed, Brooklyn began to appear in movies and musicals written by the many talented musicians and lyricists who grew up here. Pieces about Brooklyn's Coney Island and other shore communities that had been associated so strongly with leisure and play gave way to celebrations of grittier neighborhoods where romance could bloom amid the cares of the workaday world. Immigrant groups—Italian, Irish, Jewish—started making their mark on the cultural landscape, both as originators and subjects of a vital musical tradition (as in the Yiddish theater) or as objects of parody in vaudeville songs.

The sheet music covers provide a unique window into how Brooklynites and their borough were portrayed: serious, sassy, silly, sensual, eager, elegant, romantic, and naïf. All of this is expressed in the graphics and illustrations confined within the borders of the title page. Usually in black and white, or two- to three colors at most, many show the date and publisher of the piece. Many covers, particularly for the Yiddish theater pieces, include portraits of performers well-known in their day. More than half of the pieces include advertisements on the back and inside covers, for pianos, music stores, music instruction, local merchants and newspapers, and other sheet music. These covers and advertisements bear succinct witness to cultural changes that took place during the twentieth century