Music Books

There has been a long-standing history of musicians writing down compositions to preserve them for later performances. However, the mass production of written music or sheet music didn’t become popular until the 19^th century. Sheet music grew in popularity and had many similarities to books of the written words. Music books became highly ornamental during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, using previous styles of books for inspiration. For example; these books started to include illustrations similar to earlier ornamental manuscripts. The illustrations often accompanied the songs themselves for a pictorial representation of the lyrics, this is seen in The Northumberland Garland: or Newcastle Nightingale: A Matchless, Collection of Famous Songs. While sheet music consists primarily of compositions, there are other books of music that contain only words. Both of these style of music books is designed for the purpose of performance. Utilizing various types of musical notations within the text. These become popular with various songs especially those used for choruses. Through this paper became a common medium for representing compositions.