11 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
January, 1914 
COLLECTORS’ DEPARTMENT 
THE EDITOR OF THIS DEPARTMENT WILL BE GLAD TO ANSWER ANY 
LETTERS OF ENQUIRY FROM ITS READERS ON ANY SUBJECT CONNECTED 
WITH OLD FURNITURE, POTTERY AND PORCELAIN. GLASS, MINIATURES, 
TEXTILES. PRINTS AND ENGRAVINGS, BOOKS AND BINDINGS. COINS AND 
MEDALS. AND OTHER SUBJECTS OF INTEREST TO COLLECTORS. LETTERS 
OF ENQUIRY SHOULD BE ACCOMPANIED BY STAMPS FOR RETURN POSTAGE 
(Collectors' Notes and Queries and The Collectors’ Mart will be found in the 
reading matter columns of the advertising pages of this number .) 
Early Illustrated Music Titles 
By Elizabeth Lounsbery 
Photographs by T. C. Turner 
HE revival of interest in early engravings 
and prints has developed with it an appre- 
ciation likewise of old music titles to which 
engravings and lithographs were applied as 
covers, and which are now doubly 
valuable as a means, in many in- 
stances, by which have been preserved portraits 
of great men of the Civil War, the stage, often 
the composer of the music itself and celebrities 
of those times, also old buildings which have long 
since disappeared in the progress of modern life. 
Indeed, it is remarkable that as many examples 
of this kind have been saved in the course of 
years, for there is nothing quite so ephemeral for 
the purpose of collecting as sheets of music, 
which, as soon as their popularity has waned or 
they no longer appeal, are cast aside and for- 
gotten. 
11 Dil AiJilii . .Liiil U Olu'l . 
the very use to which it is dedicated being a guarantee of 
its care and preservation; as in the instance of St. Greg- 
ory’s Antiphonarium, which is said to be the oldest manu- 
script of music in existence, with an historical value that 
cannot be exaggerated, and has for many years 
been the property of the monastery at St. Gall, 
in Switzerland. 
Little is known of the early music of the Ro- 
mans, as all treatises of music from its inception 
which have come down to us from ancient 
times were written in Greek, and no original 
work is known in Latin earlier in date than the 
treatise of Boethius. Rome relied on Greece for 
her art and her sculpture, and drew her teachers 
of music as well from there and through the Jew- 
ish converts who, to escape persecution in their 
own land, took refuge in Rome, where their 
,, r . , ... . Lincoln portrait cover for nielodies were gradually accepted and became 
With ecclesiastical music this does not apply, The Wigwam Grand March extensively corrupted with the pagan hymns. 
The Bloomer Polkas” were very popular in their day. as many old music covers attest. The cover with the Lord 
met with, in collections 
Byron portrait is rarely 
