Old Sheet Music and music books - What to do with them?

[cynxing]

We have several heavy boxes worth of old sheet music and hard bound books of piano music from a parent who was first a concert pianist and then a piano teacher.  Maybe as early as from the 1930's.  To whom would this be valuable, if anyone?  Obviously the Liszt and so forth has been reprinted since, but there might be something odd or rare in there and we wouldn't know it if we saw it.  We can't pay for shipping.  We've thought of asking a piano school nearby. Any other thoughts from the forum?  Thanks.

[dcstudio]

We have several heavy boxes worth of old sheet music and hard bound books of piano music from a parent who was first a concert pianist and then a piano teacher.  Maybe as early as from the 1930's.  To whom would this be valuable, if anyone?  Obviously the Liszt and so forth has been reprinted since, but there might be something odd or rare in there and we wouldn't know it if we saw it.  We can't pay for shipping.  We've thought of asking a piano school nearby. Any other thoughts from the forum?  Thanks.

I personally love old sheet music--but then I am old school.    If the books are still in tact and readable donate them to your library or whatever university library is closest.  There may be rare editions in there--but if he was a concert pianist and teacher they have probably been well used, written in and underlined as well as doggy-eared.  these days sheet music isn't used as much because of downloadable scores but you should still have someone go through it and see if there is anything really interesting

[distantfieldrelative]

Please dear friend, do post anything that you find on here for the be fair of the rest of us.

[chopinlover01]

Yes; if you are a piano student, keep it; if not, give them to a piano student (preferably as a gift; their face will light up like a Christmas tree!).

A while back, a colleague of my teacher passed away, and he got a large chunk of her enormous library. He ended up giving me something like 50 or so books of the hundreds he received from her will. In these books, especially works of Beethoven and Schubert, there are lots of writings in the scores (some to the point of illegibility!), and sometimes they're useless, but more often than not they contain invaluable suggestions or technical exercises.

[dcstudio]

. In these books, especially works of Beethoven and Schubert, there are lots of writings in the scores (some to the point of illegibility!), and sometimes they're useless, but more often than not they contain invaluable suggestions or technical exercises.

I LOVE to read the writing in the scores, too.   It's enthralling to say the least isn't it?  I once indirectly inherited part of a collection that included books and notes going back over a hundred years from 3 generations of musicians.   A lot of it was too badly damaged to salvage but it had all these single song scores from the turn of the century up through the 1950s and 60s.  Ebb Tide, Skylark, Stardust, Tea for Two--every old standard you could imagine and some that even I had never heard of.   I understand completely how you can lose days going through stuff like that!!!  The ancient lesson books were really interesting.  NO five finger position crap or finger number reading.. they gave you the grand staff on your first day.  Some of the lessons she saved were completely hand written, too.


to the OP:  whatever you do don't throw those away... someone will cherish them.

list it on EBAY  and auction off the collection

[mjames]

Would it be too much to ask for you to catalog them so that different users can see what they would like to purchase?

[rubinsteinmad]

Send them on a probe to outer space so some extraterrestial beings a million years from now make use of it