This method necessitated the whole image and wording in reverse on a metallic plate, usually copper. The earliest printing technique that is of interest to our subject, from around 1800, is called 'engraving'. Irving Berlins, White Christmas 1942 The evolution of printing methods can be surveyed through studying sheet music. In the case of sheet music, standard expressions of love were for a young lass, for the old gang, or for one's silver-haired mother. As more than one writer has noted, every story is inevitably about love. The vast range of human endeavour of the time is examined in all a sundry manner. Collecting sheet music is like saving a slice of social history. One does not have to be a musician or even a wee bit musical to enjoy sheet music. Emotions that we have discarded or disdain today were a more common expression of that earlier day.

They just plain don't write tunes like those any more! As well, a wide range of emotions (many unabashedly of the heart-on-the-sleeve variety) that are virtually unknown in current popular music are thoroughly mined in turn-of-the-century song - from the pathetic to the humourous, from the sentimental to the maudlin. Some collectors, myself included, get a thrill from learning and performing the many oh so melodious selections. Sheet music gave the purchaser the very latest of popular hit tunes, novelty songs or patriotic anthems. With no radio, no television, no stereo, and good heavens - think of it - no internet for entertainment, one was obliged to make one's own music. The piano in the front parlour was the entertainment unit of an earlier age. It was there that I first discovered the astounding variety of popular music from days gone by. Grand Waltz, 1835 A caption from an early sheet music cover reads, 'Try this over on your piano.' I must have taken that advice to heart since way back when, as a lad, I enjoyed rifling through piano benches of my folks, relatives and friends.

Late 1800s wooden sheet music shelf