It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes I yearn for The Good Old Days. Consider this advertising flier, which our intrepid sheet music surveyor Dana Gee discovered during her inventory of the Historical Sheet Music Collections of Houghton Library and the Harvard Theatre Collection.

Many have been the excited blogs I’ve written over the years, highlighting a find in the Ward Collection. It is often difficult to restrain myself from writing about something once a day, given the riches hiding in every box. But sometimes, the discoveries are rather sad, and I thought twice about highlighting this particular score. Read More

In our recent investigations of Houghton’s historical sheet music collections, I ran across an unusual score of the anthem God Save the King. The score included an unfamiliar verse by Mr. Sheridan at the bottom of the first leaf, and I couldn’t find the imprint recorded anywhere (though frequently libraries don’t catalog their sheet music Read More

Stepping briefly outside the Ward Collection, I have been working recently with Dana Gee on our “Historical Sheet Music Collections of Houghton Library and the Harvard Theatre Collection.” As Dana has reported, she has begun our survey and already we have found amazing treasures of music and printing. On a gloomy, rainy day such as Read More

I’m pleased to introduce a few images from the Theatre Collection’s current Sheet Music project, beginning a series of posts with intriguing, entertaining and informative images. I’m working on a survey of a hidden collection, part of Harvard’s popular American sheet music holdings, and these early 20th century pieces are from a collection at Houghton Read More