{"id":4321,"date":"2019-10-15T13:54:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-15T18:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=4321"},"modified":"2019-12-14T15:23:50","modified_gmt":"2019-12-14T21:23:50","slug":"minstrelsy-and-sheet-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2019\/10\/15\/minstrelsy-and-sheet-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Minstrelsy and Sheet Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the American Civil War, over 25,000 new pianos a year were sold in America and by 1887, over 500,000 people were now studying piano. As a result, the demand for sheet music grew rapidly and more and more publishers began to enter the market [1]<\/a>. Though it may be more pleasant to believe that these publishers printed music simply to share the beauty of music with the world, this was not usually the case. Publisher’s main purpose was to make money, and they did this by printing music that would sell. <\/span>Minstrelsy<\/span><\/i> was music that would sell, and a large way publishers caught the consumers eye was through cover art and using blackface to promote these minstrel tunes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Daniel Foster, of Duke University, believes that \u201cbecause blackface relied increasingly on the publishing industry and the visual medium of sheet music, it also began to depend more on the eye, and because sheet music assumes a certain level of literacy and luxury, this reliance on the eye encouraged blackface\u2019s growth as a middle-class phenomenon [2<\/a>].\u201d Foster believes minstrelsy was standardized and ritualized through the publishing industry. Publishing houses began making minstrelsy more accessible, and \u201csome publishing houses even began to carry scripts that amateurs could order for putting on their own minstrel shows [2<\/a>].\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

A large amount of minstrel art was required to adorn these pieces of music. Below is just a sample of the large amount of blackface music I found [3<\/a>][4<\/a>]. The music is from multiple sources, including the Sheet Music Consortium and Ferris State University’s Jim Crow Museum. I also found a surprising number of this music up for auction on eBay.com.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\t\t