Sheet Music has to be bright, attractive, inducing immediate purchase. Moreover the medium must communicate some of the flavour of the song, or the personality of the artist associated with the number. The lettering too has to enter into the spirit of the event. Like much packaging of the period, the lettering on shett music may have been extemporised around a given image by a craftsman in the printing works. In several noted examples it is entirely at one with the style and formulation of the image. Here are some of my favourite sheets that show well balanced text and image - and at the largest scale I can decently load. The originals are usually about 26 x 36 cms.

EXAMPLE 1; The Anglo-American poet T.S.Eliot was a knowledgeable connoisseur of the British Music Hall song. A recent biography claims that this was the poet's favourite, a song he knew by heart. Published by Waterson Berlin, New York 1916. Lyric by Sam Lewis and Joe Young to music by G.Meyer.

EXAMPLE 2 ; chosen not just for the capriciousness of the letterforms - what is the R actually doing to the T ? - but also the astounding ugliness of Wm.J.Reilly,. The song celebrates his presence (1917) Over There. Looking closely we can see why. Published by Leo Feist New York, 1917, "Pack your little kit, show your grit, do your bit..."

EXAMPLE 3 ; a splendidly realised visual illusion of a multi-coloured blot to celebrate MY SWEET HORTENSE. Published in London by Darewski and by Irving Berlin Inc.in New York. This version is 1922, "Before I kiss Hortense, I always buy a nickle's worth of peppermints.". The sheet also includes "I Wonder if the Goblins Know." and "Granny. My Mammy's mammy".

EXAMPLE 4 ; Irving Berlin's Watch Your Step, published in New York in 1914.

EXAMPLE 5 ; The 1917 edition of The Teddy Bear's Picnic.

EXAMPLE 6 ;Jerome Kern's song of 1915, and a graphic style half way between late Art Nouveau and the emergence of the Little Master of the Flappers, John Held Jnr.

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