212 Celebrated Songs - With Pianoforte Accompaniments - Dance Music And Pianoforte Pieces - Vol 2

Here’s a suitably long, quirky and slightly battered-looking Crappy Old Books version:

212 Celebrated Songs - With Pianoforte Accompaniments - Dance Music and Pianoforte Pieces - Vol. 2 (c.1900) – Record Music / F. Pitman Hart & Co.

Before Spotify, before radio, before anyone could shout across the room at a small plastic cylinder and demand something relaxing, there was the altogether more demanding entertainment system known as owning a piano.

212 Celebrated Songs - With Pianoforte Accompaniments - Dance Music and Pianoforte Pieces - Vol. 2 is a wonderfully substantial collection from around 1900, published by F. Pitman Hart & Co. under the Record Music banner, and designed for an era when making music at home involved considerably more effort than pressing Play.

Inside are songs, piano accompaniments, dance tunes and instrumental pieces intended for the parlour, drawing room, front room, church hall, respectable social gathering or any other situation in which someone could be persuaded to sit at a piano while everybody else gradually formed opinions about their timing.

With 212 pieces packed into one volume, this was serious entertainment value. For its original price of a few shillings, the purchaser was effectively buying an entire domestic music service — albeit one requiring sheet reading, finger dexterity, regular piano tuning and at least one family member willing to practise.

The book belongs to that fascinating period when printed music was still a major form of home entertainment. Families gathered around the piano, visitors were expected to perform something, popular songs travelled through sheet music, and there was always the lurking possibility that somebody would say, “Do play that one again,” forcing everyone else to smile politely.

This volume has now survived roughly a century and a quarter, and it looks as though it knows it.

Condition is Fair. The exterior is heavily weathered and has the unmistakable appearance of a book that has spent a very long time being an old book. It is worn, aged and distinctly seasoned rather than pristine, which seems entirely appropriate for something published when Queen Victoria was either still on the throne or only recently absent from it.

Despite appearances, the binding remains surprisingly good. There is one loose signature, but importantly the threads are still intact, so the section remains attached rather than attempting an independent career elsewhere. The rest of the binding is sound enough for careful use.

The pages are browned with age, as one would expect, but remain quite usable. Nobody should purchase this expecting brilliant white paper, untouched corners and the sterile perfection of a modern reprint. This is the real thing: old paper, old printing, old music and more than a century of accumulated atmosphere.

There is something rather appealing about that. Modern sheet music can be downloaded instantly and printed perfectly. This copy has instead survived two world wars, countless house moves, generations of changing musical tastes, several entirely different methods of recorded sound and probably more than a few enthusiastic pianists who believed tempo markings were merely suggestions.

Ideal for collectors of antique music books, pianists who enjoy exploring older popular repertoire, theatrical props departments, social historians, decorative-book enthusiasts or anyone who believes books should look as though they have actually had a life.

It is also a charming reminder of a time when entertaining yourself required talent, patience and furniture weighing approximately as much as a small car.

No ISBN, because when this was published nobody had yet decided that every book needed thirteen digits, a barcode and an international database entry before it could be allowed onto a shelf.

Sold by Crappy Old Books, where “weathered” is not necessarily a criticism, browned pages are considered occupational experience, and surviving for around 125 years earns a book a certain amount of leniency.

ISBN: None
Condition: Fair

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