About the Collection | About the Music | About the Digitization Project
About the Collection
The sheet music collection of almost 22,000 pieces includes popular tunes dating as far back as 1865. Highlights include a rare copy of Scott Joplin's "Cascades" bearing his photograph, rare first editions of W.C. Handy's "Memphis Blues" and "St. Louis Blues," and scarce Confederate imprints from the Civil War. Special collections are devoted to ragtime, blues, movie tunes, foxtrots, popular music, show tunes, Irving Berlin, war songs and specialty.
In the spirit of Templeton's gift to the University, the Library has undertaken the digitization of the sheet music contained with the Templeton's gift. Since a large portion of these works were published prior to 1923, they are considered to be in the public domain. In 2000, the Library launched the Charles H. Templeton Sr. Sheet Music Collection and unveiled the project to the world. Since the project began, over 5,000 pieces of music have been scanned and made available on the Internet for scholars, musicologist and music lovers. The collection has received worldwide recognition for providing access to such a massive collection.
The following excerpt from a 1990 MSU Alumnus magazine article emphasizes the uniqueness and significance of the sheet music: "There are many things to be learned from this collection, whether you are a music major or a business major or studying marketing. The sheet music tells a world of its own about advertising." Even, he adds, someone studying political science may find an answer by listening to the recordings of Theodore Roosevelt's speeches "The Right of the People to Rule" and "Social and Industrial Justice".
Templeton understood the significance of the sheet music and how it captures the essence of the times as only music can. He also understood that the sheet music collection provides a glimpse into the changes that occurred within our country during such a tumultuous time.
Noting the significance of these changes and the collection, Templeton also added "This is one of the few collections, if not the only one, which carries through all of those changes. You started out with blues and then ragtime evolved from that and then the Dixieland sound emerged and the big band, and from that came the forerunner of modern jazz. And the interesting part of it is that as this music evolved it progressed up the Mississippi River. Where's a better place to house this collection of music than here?"
About the Music
Blues |
Foxtrots |
Irving Berlin |
Minstrel Music |
Movie Tunes |
Popular Music |
Rags |
Show Tunes |
Specialty Music |
War Songs
|
The term "blues" is used to describe feelings of sadness and hopelessness. The music called the Blues developed out of an unhappy situation - people taken forcibly from their homes and brought to a new world to live in slavery. Even long after slavery was abolished, African Americans were not accepted by the white society that granted them freedom. Despite that difficult fact, The Blues is not always sad music. It was often used by African Americans to help cope with frustrations and harshness encountered in daily lives, and to give a secret code with which to converse openly about "restricted" subjects (sex, society, voodoo).
Blues originated in the South, and the earliest forms were called country blues. They were lone singers who accompanied themselves on battered guitars (if at all). The earliest recordings of country blues were made in the 1920's, but we'll never know if this is what actual turn-of-the-century blues really sounded like (or what impact the microphone had on the early sound).
|
|
|
|
Ragtime music was still very popular during the first decade of the 20th century. It was during this time Harry Fox originated and coined the popular dance - the Foxtrot.
The Foxtrot introduced a slow-slow-quick-quick syncopation and it was necessary to have music that followed the same pattern. Ragtime music created a new genre that had a smooth, upbeat tempo and could follow the 4/4 rhythms. The Foxtrot remains a very popular ballroom dance today, although it may possibly be the hardest to learn to date.
|
|
|
|
Irving Berlin composed over 900 songs, including such classics as "White Christmas" and "God Bless America." He also wrote 19 musicals and 18 scores for movies that include stars such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Berlin started his musical career when he was a singing waiter at the age of 19. While working as a waiter in Chinatown, he gained credit for songwriting when he wrote the words to "Marie from Sunny Italy." From that point on, he not only received credit for songwriting, but he also gained recognition for writing his own tunes. Berlin never learned how to formally play the piano or read music, but that didn't stop him from becoming "one of America's most outstanding writers."
|
|
|
|
A combination of Celtic and African American musical techniques, Minstrel music is the source for many different forms of music. It paved the way for different venues such as Bluegrass, Ragtime, the Blues and many more.
The Minstrel music craze started in the 1830s when Joel Sweeney came up with the concept of a five-string banjo. This banjo became the base of all minstrel music. The original instrument used to play minstrel music was the violin. Plantation owners would send any men they had who possessed musical talent to renowned cities to learn how to play Celtic music. This talent was showcased at cotillions and parties. When the men were not playing for their owners, they would put their own African musical influence in with the Irish. This music was overheard, copied by "black faced" minstrels and started the craze of minstrel shows.
Today, the music is still very popular and performed (without black face) at bluegrass and folk festivals as well as concerts.
|
|
|
 |
With the advent of talking pictures, Hollywood opened up a brand new arena of music composition: movie tunes. Movie music could be either of the type composed as a soundtrack or as music composed as individual pieces. Many of the songs composed as individual pieces were intended to showcase a particular movie star (even if the song had no connection to a movie at all!).
|
|
|
|
Popular music of the early 1900's is similar to today's popular music in one important aspect; the music reflects the times. Popular music serves almost as an auditory snapshot of the morals, values, and ethics of any particular time-period. Frequently, the habits and viewpoints of an earlier generation can be troubling, embarrassing, or even offensive in modern times. Usually, negative stereotypes reflecting racial and/or gender issues are represented in less-than-flattering images found in the music. However, these items are presented here as part of the historical record.
|
|
|
|
The craze for ragtime music swept America beginning in the 1890's, and was fueled by the availability of pianos, player pianos, and commercial sheet music. Many different avenues of American musical influence came together to form the distinctive sound of ragtime, including the syncopation of African American music, which was a combination of African drumming rhythms and Caribbean dance rhythms. These rhythmic influences were superimposed onto the basic design of Western dances, such as polkas and schottisches. The first published instrumental rag to use the word "rag" was "The Mississippi Rag" (January, 1897).
|
|
|
|
Although American musical theatre developed its own unique voice in the 19th Century, that sound was permanently altered by the invention of Thomas Edison in 1877 of the "talking machine" cylinder. Most of what was captured on those early recordings had originated in American stage performances in one way or another. More than likely, show tunes composed after 1890 were written with the recording process in mind. Additionally, by the 1910's, another Edison invention called the Kinetoscope allowed audiences to see their theatre stars as well as hear them.
|
|
|
|
Pieces that defy description are grouped together as "specialty music." These pieces concern such diverse subjects as cars, cities, war heroes, elections, consumer products, and celebrities. There are also versions of old favorites, such as "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny," and music from cartoon shows such as "Felix the Cat" and "Mickey Mouse." Music about geographical regions can also be found in this genre ("Chinatown, My Chinatown;" "Honolulu, America Loves You;" and "Along the Rocky Road to Dublin," among others ).
|
|
|
|
In order to galvanize American might during World War I, President Woodrow Wilson turned to New York's Tin Pan Alley for help. Some war songs were written out of pure patriotic conviction, while others were more "made-to-order." Irving Berlin was among the leaders in patriotic songs, as he was drafted into the U.S. Army and stationed at Camp Upton, on Long Island. While in the army, he was commissioned to write a musical, Yip, Yip, Yaphank (1918), performed by army personnel as a benefit to build a service center at Camp Upton. The musical included the hit song (sung by Berlin) "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning."
|
About the Digitization Project
The digitization of the collections housed in the Charles H. Templeton Music Museum represents a significant emphasis and priority for the Mississippi State University Libraries. The well-preserved collections represent one man’s distinct yet diverse interests in music and business. They span a timeframe from the Civil War to the Vietnam era, and cover all genres of popular music during that time. The collections document the evolution of America’s society, economy, international policy, and especially, its music.
The Sheet Music Collection was first appraised and arranged/categorized by David A. Jasen, musicologist and internationally known author, composer, performer, teacher and collector. Mr. Jasen assigned each piece to one of 7 categories: blues, Irving Berlin songs, foxtrots, movie tunes, minstrel songs, popular, rags, show tunes, specialty, and war songs. He then alphabetized the sheet music by title. However, the collection was not truly cataloged. Therefore, the goals of this project are to catalog, preserve and make the collection accessible. For that reason, every printed score will be inventoried in the form of adding a barcode number on a sheet of acid-free paper along with the Title, Composer, Publisher, Date, and physical location of the piece. This is then inserted into Mylar sleeves with the original piece. The inventory number, description of the physical piece and electronic piece are then recorded in the metadata for that title. This process will insure that every item in the physical collection will be cataloged, regardless of whether or not it was selected for digitization.
Selection
As the goals of the project are to catalog, digitally archive and make accessible via the web all titles in the sheet music collection, selection criteria is minimal. While Mr. Templeton did not collect multiple copies the exact same pieces, the collection does contain multiple print versions of the same musical scores. These pieces differ in the cover art, advertisements, and often the performer featured on the cover. Though each version may have its own merit as a unique piece because of the social and historical relevance of the different features, they are considered ‘duplicates’ for our purposes.
Preservation is a primary goal of the project, and certainly we would prefer to digitally archive every item in the collection, but due to the limited resources available we have chosen to scan only unique titles for this phase. For now, however, when multiple versions of a score are encountered, selection is based primarily on the physical condition of the pieces. Typically, one version is in better condition to be handled and scanned: one version is faded more, or has tears or creases or other undesirable attributes. In these obvious cases the best-preserved piece is always chosen.
In other cases where the differences are in the covers or the advertisements, the criteria are more subjective. We generally chose pieces with cover illustrations rather than text-only covers, unless the physical condition of the item makes it less desirable. The cover art provides a glimpse into popular culture of the times, and has value to researchers and other patrons who may have little or no interest in the sheet music itself.
Capture/ scanning
The methodology described here was adopted in January of 2007, when the production phase of the U.S. Small Business Administration funding began.
For each piece of sheet music scanned, the following files are being created:
- Archival copy scanned at 600 dpi and saved as a TIFF files stored on a separate share on the digital media archive. Plans for FY 2007/2008 include installing a separate SAN to store the archive quality images for long term preservation.
- One folder per score containing all archival TIFFs.
- Print-quality PDF files at 200 dpi.
- Thumbnail image (JPEG, 72 dpi, 120 pixels in height) of the cover.
Scanning for this project is done with Epson 1500 Gt-15000 flatbed scanners at 600dpi (dots per inch) resolution, which meets or exceeds the best practices recommended by most digital projects. The covers are scanned in 24-bit color, while the scores and advertisement pages are scanned in 8-bit grayscale.
We have chosen to adopt the ‘scan-once’ philosophy, which dictates that all items should be scanned and archived at the highest practical resolution, creating archival quality digital surrogates for the printed scores. This process will help prevent any situation where the original pieces would need to be handled.
The scanned images are then saved with no alterations as uncompressed TIFF files. These are considered the ‘digital archival’ versions. Each of these institutions differ slightly in their standards for capture and processing, as well as their format(s) for delivery. The constant evolution of software, hardware, and storage media make standards for this type of project very difficult to nail down. After reviewing the advantages and disadvantages of the other collections, we decided to err on the side of caution for the archival images, and scan everything at 600dpi. The high scanning resolution and the fact that the files are stored using no compression make for large files, and consequently requires more storage space. Our decision to error on the side of caution and scan at 600dpi was based on the fact that we do not want to allow the storage issue to prevent us from setting high standards for archival images and because electronic storage devices are increasing in capacity and becoming more affordable.
The “delivery,” or “access” files present more of a challenge. Most sheet music digital collections wrestle with the issue of accessibility versus printability; is it more important that the files load quickly in a web browser, or print legibly? For many sites the result is a compromise which does not adequately meet either goal. We chose to focus on the print quality of the sheet music, as bandwidth and file transfer speeds are constantly improving. To this end we create a PDF document comprised of the cover and all pages of the original print item, including advertisements. The access files are consequently large and can take a few moments to open, but CDM plans to release a software upgrade in fall of 2008. Much of the focus of the upgrade will be on increased support of PDF files. The new version should extract pages from PDFs to load individually, and therefore more quickly, while retaining the settings of the PDF so that print-quality is not compromised. If the upgrade does not improve the access time to within a few seconds, we will have tested other options for providing separate display and printer-friendly files. This in-house solution would be more time-consuming and therefore costly, so we plan to wait to see how well the CDM version 4.3 PDF enhancements work before proceeding. In addition to the sample pieces we’ve provided, we are also providing links to access prototypes of the scores as we expect them to display after the upgrade. The scanned images are compressed to 200 dpi, sized to 8 ½ by 11 inches and compiled into the PDF booklet using Photoshop image processing software. The covers are not otherwise altered, but the interior pages, including the sheet music itself, are enhanced for better printing. The background field is converted to pure white, and then any smears or smudges that might obscure the print are removed using the brush tool. Any stamps, handwritten notes or other markings are left intact, to preserve the authenticity of the original collection.
Storage, maintenance and protection of data
The data for this project is stored on a Windows 2003 ii6 server in a secure location in the Library where it remains unaltered and password protected. This allows our scanning technicians to copy the archive copies to it, but not remove or change them. The images are digitized from desktop workstations and uploaded directly to the server. This server will use a Storage Area Network with a redundant copy of all data. Keeping the data on a live disk in this manner ensures that the data is accessible and does not rely on CDs or DVDs which have an untested shelf life. Tape backups to LTO3 media are performed at regular intervals to add a second layer of storage and copies are stored off-site for additional protection in the event of a disaster.
References for Digital Imaging Standards
