Popular music in the 'gilded age

Music is part of everyday life in late twentieth-century America, due primarily to the technology of recorded sound. We are surrounded by it: we have radios to wake us in the morning and to entertain us while we drive our automobiles, background music on television and in movies, 'atmosphere' music in elevators and restaurants, and collections of musical recordings in our homes. Because most of the music heard today is recorded, we assume that the pervasiveness of music in our lives is, indeed, a twentieth-century phenomenon. There is evidence to suggest, however, that music was almost as commonplace for late nineteenth-century urban Americans as it is for us today. The popularity of sheet music and of ubiquitous parlour pianos are obvious manifestations of amateur music making by the generation of our grandparents and great-grandparents. Less well known, however, is the fact that Americans of the latter half of the nineteenth century, especially urban Americans, were in frequent contact with professional performing musicians, who played not only at functions where we would expect to find music but also, as a matter of course, at events with which we do not normally associate music and musicians

Aesthetics · Amateur · Archaeology · Art · Electroacoustic music · Grandparent · History of music · Jazz · Literature · Music education · Music history · Music industry · Musical · Period (music · Popular music · Popularity · Visual arts · History · Music · Music History and Culture · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society

• Wages and Earnings in the United States, 1860-1890

  Rendigs Fels, Clarence D Long•The Mississippi Valley Historical…•1960

  Add to list

• The Fabulous Phonograph

  R L Downes, Ralph Downes et al.•The Economic History Review•1958

  Add to list

• Wages and Earnings in the United States, 1860-1890

  H M Douty, Clarence D Long•Industrial and Labor Relations…•1961

  Add to list