Collections

Works issued by or for the use of Presbyterian Christians, whose theology emphasizes presbyterian polity and (usually) a Reformed understanding of salvation and who emerged in Scotland in the 1560s. The denominations most represented in this collection are the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America and the Presbyterian Church in the United States, which separated from the former over slavery in Atlanta, Georgia in 1861. See also the …

Works associated with the eastern and western slopes of the Appalachian Mountains between southwestern Virginia and Athens, Georgia, and as far west as the Cumberlands. Excludes lowland and non-mountainous areas.

Works associated with ports along the western and eastern shores of the Chesapeake Bay, such as Baltimore, Maryland and the Virginia of Arlington, Richmond, and Norfolk.

Books associated with Cincinnati, Ohio, and surrounding Ohio communities. Nearby locations on the Kentucky side of the Ohio–Kentucky border are included in the Lower Ohio Valley collection.

Books associated with the highland areas west of the Blue Ridge, encompassing most of eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee between the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains, far northwestern Georgia, and most of northeastern Alabama extending as far southwest as Birmingham.

Books associated with the city of Dayton, Ohio, and bordering towns that were important to Brethren and Restorationist education and publishing.

Books associated with the state of Florida.

Works associated with both the Shenandoah Valley and the Cumberland Valley, lowland areas between the Appalachian and Piedmont highlands extending from the Susquehanna River basin at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, across Maryland and the Virginia/West Virginia border as far south as the James River basin in Virginia.

Works associated with the highland grassland areas of Texas and Oklahoma that lie between the Ozark and Rocky Mountain foothills. North Texas is treated as a separate geographical region; see the North Texas collection.

Works associated with the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida including inland river ports such as Houston, Texas, and Jackson, Alabama.

Books published in, distributed to, or otherwise associated with the historical Indian Territories, where southeastern Native American populations were forcibly relocated following the 1830 Indian Removal Act. Indian Territory was incorporated into the state of Oklahoma in 1907.

Volumes associated with locations outside the United States by authorship, publication, manufacture, distribution, or use.

Works associated with the cities of Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas City, Kansas, and St. Joseph, Missouri, along with bordering areas.

Books associated with the Atlantic coastline and its river and delta cities extending from Charleston, South Carolina, south to the Georgia/Florida border.

Works associated with the Kentucky side of the Ohio River between Cincinnati, Ohio, and the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, including locations as far south as Hickman, Kentucky. Select Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois locations in the northern basin of the river are also included.

Books associated with the portion of the Piedmont Plateau that is highland but non-mountainous, extending south of the Charlotte, North Carolina, area immediately east of the Blue Ridge across South Carolina and west into Georgia and central Alabama.

Works associated with the lowland areas of Tennessee and Kentucky lying west of the Appalachians but south and east of the Ohio and Mississippi River drainage basins.

Books associated with the lowland plains area between the southern tip of the Appalachians and the Ozark and Ouachita highlands. This collection includes the entire Mississippi River delta along with neighboring areas of Tennessee and Alabama that are east of the river basin but outside of the adjacent highland areas.

Books associated with the city of Nashville, Tennessee. This collection includes works associated with neighborhoods and nearby communities in Davidson County, Tennessee. Other neighboring locations now part of the present-day metropolitan area are included in the Middle Tennessee collection.

Books with a publisher, manufacturer, or distributor located in a major city in the Northern United States, including Northeastern and Midwestern cities.

Works associated with the area of Texas that lies in between the densely treed Piney Woods and the desolately treeless Great Plains, extending from the Oklahoma border as far south as the Austin metropolitan area.

Works associated with the highland areas of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas between the Mississippi River basin and Great Plains including the low-lying Arkansas Valley area in between the Ozark, Boston, and Oachita ranges. This collection also includes some works from neighboring highland areas of Oklahoma and Kansas.

Books associated with the broadly triangular area within the highland but non-mountainous Piedmont Plateau outlined by Charlotte, Greensboro, and Raleigh, North Carolina, including some works from surrounding towns.

Books associated with the swampy and thickly wooded border area between east Texas, north and central Louisiana, and southwestern Arkansas, extending south of the Oachitas and west of the Mississippi River floodplain.

Works associated with the St. Louis, Missouri, metropolitan area.

Works associated with West Virginia and Kentucky locales in the drainage basin of the Ohio River as far south as Cincinnati, Ohio. Pennsylvania and Ohio locations in the northern basin of the river may also be included.

Works associated with the low-lying plains regions of southwestern Georgia, southeastern Alabama, and the inland Florida panhandle, extending north to Macon, Georgia.

Works containing music meant to be stylistically and ideologically disinct from folk or popular music. Generally, such music would be performed in a concert or salon setting and appreciated primarily for its aesthetic qualities.

Works containing gospel music written or arranged by Black composers or anthologized for the use of Black congregations.

Works prepared for the annual, semi-annual, or quarterly singing conventions at which attendees gathered to sightread newly written and often structurally complex gospel songs.

Works containing multi-part vocal music mostly in the dispersed harmony style associated with independently moving harmony parts, a mix of wide and close voicings, and frequent open chords.

Works that include the style of gospel music prevalent circa 1850–1870, when gospel was associated primarily with Sunday school music. While drawing stylistically on contemporaneous middlebrow secular song, gospel music of this era often uses traditional hymn meters and does not necessarily include refrain.

Full-length collections devoted overwhelmingly or exclusively to gospel music and intended to be used over a long period of time (in contrast to gospel annuals). Such works were often created as supplements to collections of conventional metrical hymnody with the intention that the metrical collection be used in formal church worship and the gospel hymnal in more informal settings.

Works that include notated instrumental parts. In this corpus, the most widespread instrumental music is accompaniment by keyboard instruments such as piano, organ, or melodeon; obligato parts for solo instrument, preludes, postludes, and interludes are found with some regularity.

Works that include the style of gospel music prevalent circa 1900–1925, when quartet and convention performance of gospel became prominent. Gospel songs written during this era often highlight the vocal or sightreading skill of the performers with intricate rhythmic and textural interplay, as well as increasingly chromatic harmonies.

Works known to have been performed via "lining out," in which a leader reads or sings one line of a metrical text and congregation replies by singing the same line. Titles have been selected for collection based on the twenty-first-century performance practice associated with them. As a reflection of practices between 1850–1925, this collection is therefore likely significantly incomplete.

Works that include the style of gospel music prevalent circa 1870–1900, when gospel was popularized among adult audiences and began to be sung in dedicated "gospel meetings." Gospel music of this era had a strong emphasis on singability and is characterized by catchy refrains that a large group can easily learn by ear.

Works that include music scored for mixed-voice, men's, or women's quartet. This selection primarily encompasses nineteenth-century music for quartet choir (that is, church choirs of only four voices, sometimes singing alternatingly with the larger congregation) and twentieth-century music for gospel quartets (professional or semi-professional performers of the gospel style, often assembled to promote a publishing company or normal school).

Works that include music in the "scientific" style prevalent between 1820–1880, which prioritized the harmonic and partwriting conventions of late-eighteenth-century continental art music, adapting them to the scale of metrical hymnody.

Works that include religious songs from the Black oral tradition, popularly associated with the antebellum period.

Works featuring music notated with the four-shape system debuted by William Little and William Smith in 1801 in which triangle, circle, square, and diamond noteheads correspond with the syllables fa, sol, la, and mi.

Works featuring music notated using numerals that represent the degrees of the scale, either with or without traditional notational elements such as noteheads and the staff.

Works featuring music notated with the seven-shape system debuted by Jesse B. Aikin in 1846, in which each degree of the scale is represented by a differently shaped notehead. Aikin's system was the most successful of many competing "seven-shape" systems during the period and remains in widespread use today.

Works featuring music in which each degree of the scale is represented by a differently shaped notehead. The most popular of "seven-shape" notation systems, that created by Jesse B. Aikin, is specifically excluded from this collection; for works using Aikin notation, see the general Seven-Shape collection.

Works created by Black authors or for the use of Black audiences.

Works created by Cherokee authors or for the use of Cherokee audiences, such as speakers of the Cherokee language.

Works created by Choctaw authors or for the use of Choctaw audiences, such as speakers of the Choctaw language.

Works created by Czech authors or for the use of Czech (and Czech-American) audiences, such as Czech speakers.

Works created by Delaware (Lenapi) authors or for the use of Delaware (Lenapi) audiences, such as speakers of the Delaware language.

Works created by Dutch authors or for the use of Dutch (and Dutch-American) audiences, including Dutch speakers.

Works created by French authors or for the use of French (and French-American) audiences, including French speakers.

Works created by German authors or for the use of German (and German-American) audiences, including German speakers.

Works created by Spanish-language authors or for the use of Spanish-speaking audiences.

Works created by Hungarian authors or for the use of Hungarian (and Hungarian-American) audiences, including Hungarian-speakers.

Works created by Jewish authors or for the use of Jewish audiences.

Works created by Muscogee (Creek) authors or for the use of Muscogee (Creek) audiences, including speakers of the Muscogee language.

Works created by Portuguese authors or for the use of Portuguese (and Portuguese-American) audiences, including Portuguese speakers.

Works created by Potawatomi authors or for the use of Potawatomi audiences, including speakers of the Potawatomi language.

Works created by Swedish or Norwegian authors, or for the use of Swedish or Norwegian (and Swedish-American or Norwegian-American) audiences, including speakers of Swedish or Norwegian.