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The shade of the palm tree - Public domain sheet music scan

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The shade of the palm tree - Public domain sheet music scan

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Tin Pan Alley originally referred to a specific place: West 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the Flower District of Manhattan. It was the location of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. In the mid-19th century, copyright control of melodies was not as strict, and publishers would often print their own versions of the songs popular at the time. With stronger copyright protection laws late in the century, songwriters, composers, lyricists, and publishers started working together for their mutual financial benefit. Songwriters would literally bang on the doors of Tin Pan Alley businesses to get new material. The start of Tin Pan Alley is usually dated to about 1885, when a number of music publishers set up shop in the same district of Manhattan. The end of Tin Pan Alley is less clear cut. Some date it to the start of the Great Depression in the 1930s when the phonograph, radio, and motion pictures supplanted sheet music as the driving force of American popular music, while others consider Tin Pan Alley to have continued into the 1950s when earlier styles of music were upstaged by the rise of rock & roll, which was centered on the Brill Building. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, 1882, "tin pan" was slang for "a decrepit piano" (1882), and the term came to mean a "hit songwriting business" by 1907. The biggest music houses established themselves in New York City, but small local publishers – often connected with commercial printers or music stores – continued to flourish throughout the country, and there were important regional music publishing centers in Chicago, New Orleans, St. Louis, and Boston. When a tune became a significant local hit, rights to it were usually purchased from the local publisher by one of the big New York firms.

After the Paris exposition of 1889, France gloried in her triumph. The time between the expositions of 1889 and 1900 was an era of economic prosperity. When Germans announced they want to hold the next world expo, French politicians, industrialists, and intellectuals realized that the country which hosted the exposition at the threshold of the new century "will define the philosophy and express the synthesis of the 19th century." Participating nations architects were given complete freedom to construct their national pavilions in any style, and display whatever they wished therein. The sole limit was the space assigned to each. The buildings of the 1900 exposition fall into two distinct categories, each representing an essential element of the spirit of 1900: Traditionalist 19th century-styled and Art Nouveau - the new style appropriate to the twentieth century. The pavilion to symbolize the new era was the Palace of Electricity. Many expositions gave visitors an illusory trip to remote lands. The Trans-Siberian was a simulated Peking to Moscow railway and "Tour of the World," located at the base of the Eiffel Tower featured moving canvas of the sights and people throughout the world. More than 83,000 exhibitors and attendance of 51 million visitors made it the largest of any exposition. The 127 congresses had attracted over 80,000 participants. The Gare d'Orsay railroad station (now the Musée d'Orsay), and two of original entrances of Paris Métro stations by Hector Guimard., and the Pont d’Alexandre, the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais opened with the exposition. The exposition Universelle of 1900 was the last of its kind held in France.

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Date

1900 - 1900
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Source

New York Public Library
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Copyright info

Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication ("CCO 1.0 Dedication")

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