Primary Sources: U.S. Civil War: Music

A collection from the University of Wisconsin related to the band music of 1st Brigade Band of Brodhead, Wisconsin.

"The Civil War Era Sheet Music collection contains nearly 35 different pieces of sheet music. Crandall numbers are indicated if they were referenced in Marjorie Lyle Crandall's book, Confederate Imprints: A Check List Based Principally on the Collection of the Boston Athenæum (1955)."

"These thirteen authentic maritime songs from the era of the American Civil War (1861-65) intone the story of war on the water. "

"... consists of over 2500 pieces culled from the Library's collections. The collection is limited to music about the war and therefore does not include every piece of sheet music published during the war. In addition to the music, many of the covers are worth noting. They treat a variety of subjects ranging from conventional portraits of generals to battlefield scenes to the popular image of Jefferson Davis escaping in petticoats."
The Library of Congress

Download the original lyrics and transcripts of songs about John Brown. The site also provides an analysis of the work.

Located in the Special Collections at the Milton S. Eisenhower Library of The Johns Hopkins University, the collection contains over 29,000 pieces of music and focuses on popular American music spanning the period 1780 to 1960. Pieces are indexed on this site; a search will retrieve a catalog description of the pieces. An image of the cover and each page of music will also be retrieved if the music was published before 1923 and is in the public domain.

"On September 27, 1974, the Music Division of the Library of Congress re-created a typical concert of brass band and vocal music from mid-nineteenth-century America. That concert has become the starting-point for Band Music from the Civil War Era, an online collection that brings together musical scores, recordings, photographs, and essays documenting an important but insufficiently explored part of the American musical past."