About

For the first time, an artist has taken measures to preserve the art of antique sheet music by recreating it. Linda Sones Feinberg, author of Teasing: Innocent Fun or Sadistic Malice? and I'm Grieving As Fast As I Can: How Young Widows and Widowers Can Cope and Heal, understands the importance of this art form that combines politics, art and culture throughout hundreds of years.

"You could do a history of the United States through sheet-music covers," said Marianne Wurlitzer to The New York Times. Ms. Wurlitzer is a partner of Wurlitzer-Bruck, a firm that specializes in vintage musical materials and instruments. "Sheet music is a whole world," she said.

FEINBERG’S 50 WORKS OF MUSICAL ART

From Hawaii to France, dancers to devils, and love to ladies' hats, Feinberg has a painting for everyone. With hundreds of pieces of vintage sheet music, and gallons of acrylic paint on canvas, Mrs. Feinberg has created a collection of 50 thematic paintings to commemorate this art form that dates back to the 1800's.

According to one article in The New York Times, "by 1850 about 60 piano manufacturers existed in the New York area alone, making it an important local industry that provided factory work for new immigrants and created jobs for salesman, tuners, movers and music teachers. By the end of the 19* century, about one in six New Yorkers worked in some piano related job." ("Fanfare for the Uncommon Piano", The New York Times, June 6, 2003.)

THEMES

Sheet music means something different to every generation. Today, some people still use pieces to play songs while others frame attractive covers for their living rooms. Sheet music collectors often focus on pieces with pictorial themes like Broadway shows, Disney characters, World War I, ragtime, women's suffrage, celebrities and more. Many covers illustrate activities like boating, courting and even bowling. There's a cover for every interest! Despite the popularity for using the web, new songs are still printed on sheet music with covers of a completely different style. Many call them a good, future collectible because of the advanced graphics that modem technology provides.

RESOURCES

There is such a wide range of sheet music styles, many people struggle to come up with a definition of what sheet music actually is. Duke University has a library of more than 3,000 American pieces and says that "only the physical format (of sheet music) remains constant...sheet music is best described as single sheets printed on one or both sides, folios (one sheet folded in half to form four pages), folios with a loose half-sheet inserted to yield six pages, double-folios with a loose half-sheet inserted within the fold of an inner folio to produce ten pages."

Other such large collections of sheet music are spread throughout the country. You can even find thousands on the Internet. The New York Public Library opened a web gallery of about 4,000 sheet music covers called "American Popular Song Sheet Covers, 1890 - 1900". To see it, and even print the music for free, visit digitalgallery.nypl.org.

To learn more about sheet music resources, The Music Library Association has an extensive list of links available at www.lib.duke.edu/music/sheetmusic/coUections.html. For comments, questions and concerns about "Musical Paintings" by Linda Sones Feinberg, contact her daughter and publicist — see contact below.

MEDIA CONTACT

Marissa Feinberg
(917) 494- 5041
marissa@triplebottomwhy.com