"Lithography came to the United States from Germany, where Alois Senefelder had developed the process in the late 1700s. In 1818, the first American lithograph appeared. Lithography became the most popular form of art in nineteenth century America. Lithographs were easy and inexpensive to produce in large quantities, so people bought them and hung them on the walls of their homes. Furthermore, they were used widely to embellish the title pages of sheet music to enhance interest in the piece. Some lithographed music sheets showed pictures of pretty girls or flower arrangements or charming family groups or views of an old farm gate or some other form of sentimental attachment. But the most appealing covers are the ones whose subject matter relates to some aspect of American history or whose artist, or lithographer, is one who went on to fame in the American art scene." Lester S. Levy |
 |  | | In 1826, the first American lithographed sheet music title page was produced. It was a bravura piece entitled The Log House. The music was by Anton P. Heinrich, a prodigious composer, who is represented by the fiddler on the cover. The cover design was by David Claypoole Johnston, a skillful caricaturist known as the American Cruickshank. | The Archers March, composed in 1829, was dedicated to the United Bowmen, a group organized by five Philadelphians. The rather primitive lithograph is the work of David Kennedy and William B. Lucas, who were among the earliest of a distinguished line of Philadelphia lithographers. |  |  | | John Cole was the first Baltimore publisher to use lithography on a music sheet, and Thomas Campbell was one of the earliest lithographers in Maryland. Campbell’s contemporary, J. Penniman, had illustrated a cover with a sailing vessel on a song called The Bird at Sea, published in the early 1830s. The piece was so popular that several editions were printed, including one with an illustration by Campbell. |  |  | | The cover of Far O’er the Deep Blue Sea, published in 1834, represents one of two lithographs for music sheets done by Alfred Jacob Miller, one of Baltimore, Maryland’s best-known artists. His most important work was that done when he accompanied an expedition into the Rocky Mountains in the late 1830s to make on-the-spot sketches of the landscape. | The 1834 title page for Paganini Quadrilles pictures the exciting violinist that Americans were hoping to see in person. Unfortunately, Paganini was too busy touring in Europe to find time for an engagement in the United States. The lithographer of this illustration was Gustavus Kramm, a native of Germany, whose sheet music covers are rare.
|  | | In 1835 the railroad between Philadelphia and Norristown, Pennsylvania was completed. The distance was eighteen miles, and the locomotive went galloping down the tracks at the breakneck speed of 28 miles an hour. Even before the line had been completed, a musical number called The Rail Road Steam Galop had been published. The artist of the cover was probably Philadelphian W. L. Breton, better known for his maritime views, and the lithographers were apparently Kennedy and Lucas. | | The tour continues on the next page |
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