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An interesting aside is that I was looking through a music history textbook belonging to one of my kids. The book chose the invention of movable type for printi

An interesting aside is that I was looking through a music history textbook belonging to one of my kids. The book chose the invention of movable type for printing sheet music, as the beginning of music as an "industry." I've also read that as early as the 19th century, sheet music was a huge industry, and had many of the characteristics that we associate with recorded music, such as "stars," musicians getting ripped off by publishers, and so forth. It was reasonably common for people to have a piano in the parlor (if you were affluent enough to have a parlor), or some other instrument, and to entertain yourself by playing the latest "hits" from sheet music.

zozbot234 5y ago
Yup, and you can still find quite a bit of that "popular" sheet music on IMSLP if you search around for it. The nice thing about sheet music compared to recordings alone is that it makes music into a truly literate artform; it becomes quite easy to read what the composer expected to be played, and to recreationally engage with the music on that level - perhaps even by performing it yourself! (It's of course a far more intellectually and audiatorily meaningful engagement than just passively listening to a recording.) There's also a flip side in that when comparing what we read with a heard performance, we become far more intuitively aware of the additional improvisation-based elements that a good, 'inspired' performance can bring to the music. The sheet music itself is a bit like a structural sketch, a blueprint that ought to be suitably "ornamented" in a good performance.
- analog31 5y ago
  Indeed, IMSLP is such a phenomenal resource. Both of my kids are classical musicians, and they enjoy getting together with friends to play chamber music. Besides being able to get so much material, they both have Apple tablets and page turning pedals, so they're largely paperless.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    (I suppose I should point out that IMSLP is a crowd-sourced resource that could always benefit from new contributions. Even if you don't have scans or transcriptions of old music to upload, there's a lot that can be contributed by just curating information about the existing content. For example, lots of large collections of pieces have been uploaded that have no detailed listings of their contents, and are not cross-referenced from the wiki pages for their individual pieces. Fixing this will make things easier for users who are looking for stuff to play.)
zem 5y ago
i learnt about this from watching the 'jeeves and wooster' tv series - there was an episode where bertie got the latest hit song as a piece of sheet music and proceeded to the piano to check it out.

zozbot234 5y ago

Yup, and you can still find quite a bit of that "popular" sheet music on IMSLP if you search around for it. The nice thing about sheet music compared to recordings alone is that it makes music into a truly literate artform; it becomes quite easy to read what the composer expected to be played, and to recreationally engage with the music on that level - perhaps even by performing it yourself! (It's of course a far more intellectually and audiatorily meaningful engagement than just passively listening to a recording.) There's also a flip side in that when comparing what we read with a heard performance, we become far more intuitively aware of the additional improvisation-based elements that a good, 'inspired' performance can bring to the music. The sheet music itself is a bit like a structural sketch, a blueprint that ought to be suitably "ornamented" in a good performance.

analog31 5y ago
Indeed, IMSLP is such a phenomenal resource. Both of my kids are classical musicians, and they enjoy getting together with friends to play chamber music. Besides being able to get so much material, they both have Apple tablets and page turning pedals, so they're largely paperless.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  (I suppose I should point out that IMSLP is a crowd-sourced resource that could always benefit from new contributions. Even if you don't have scans or transcriptions of old music to upload, there's a lot that can be contributed by just curating information about the existing content. For example, lots of large collections of pieces have been uploaded that have no detailed listings of their contents, and are not cross-referenced from the wiki pages for their individual pieces. Fixing this will make things easier for users who are looking for stuff to play.)

zem 5y ago

i learnt about this from watching the 'jeeves and wooster' tv series - there was an episode where bertie got the latest hit song as a piece of sheet music and proceeded to the piano to check it out.