Virtual Talk: American Sheet Music at the British Library

Although once disregarded by historians as sentimental and ephemeral, today American sheet music is valued for the unique light it sheds upon the nation’s concerns and aspirations. In this talk, Eccles Centre for American Studies librarian Jean Petrovic will share items held at the British Library. She will consider how this music moved ‘from the sacred to the secular and from the timeless to the timely’ and will explore how songs associated with World War I and the movement for female suffrage captured, reflected – and possibly even shaped – the cultural and political zeitgeist.

Image: Marie Zimmerman, Votes for Women. Suffrage Rallying Song. Philadelphia: E.M. Zimmerman, 1915. British Library shelfmark: H.3992.r.(18)