This is an artificial collection containing musical manuscripts collected by the Phillips Library. It comprises mostly note books, in which people wrote out popular songs, dance tunes, hymns, and chamber music in staff notation. Also included are new arrangements, original compositions, and musical exercises. The note books themselves are in different formats, showing the evolution in music stationery from hand-bound sheets on which musical staves were hand-drawn, to commercially bound books with pre-printed staves. Several of the note books were apparently re-used by flipping and turning, beginning notations anew at the back pages. Some of the manuscripts in the collection are inscribed with names and dates, others are undated. These details are included in Appendix 1. The inclusive dates are 1786 to 1872. Also included are catalogs from the Essex Institute Musical Library.

The contents of this collection are primary sources evidencing musical culture north of Boston in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Place names referenced in the manuscripts include Salem, Massachusetts; Essex, Massachusetts; Marblehead, Massachusetts; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Moultonborough, New Hampshire.

The earliest manuscripts in this collection document the leisure-time musical pursuits of people who had other occupations. The later items document the growth of a class of musicians and music teachers, for whom music was their principle occupation. This collection includes music note books into which favorite instrumental pieces, songs, and hymns were notated; some original compositions; choir singers' part books; and vocal trios and quartets collected by the Essex Institute.

The manuscripts reflect changing popular tastes in music over this period, and the development of local musical repertories. They are especially rich in hymns, dance tunes, and songs. The popularity of dancing is evidenced not only by the many tunes notated but also by a notebook of dance figures, giving caller's instructions for sets, contra dances, quadrilles, and cotillions danced to the tunes. The instruments specified in the manuscripts are typical of the time period, ranging from solo fife, flute, clarinet, and violin in the earliest to piano, organ, and vocal ensembles in the latest.

The repertories notated in these manuscripts derive from musical life in the Salem area: music lessons, church choirs, chamber music, dances, and concerts. Some are personal collections of popular pieces and instructional materials. Some of the manuscripts contain unique arrangements of popular pieces and some original compositions by local musicians David Jewett, Benjamin Lynde Oliver, and Henry Kemble Oliver.

Many of the items are associated with families and individuals whose other papers are held in the Phillips Library. The items contain inscriptions connecting them to individuals and to successive generations of one family. Notable are the musicians Henry Kemble Oliver and Benjamin Lynde Oliver; Stephen Goodhue Wheatland, Mayor of Salem; Stephen Cleveland Blyth; and Francis Henry Lee. Items inscribed with female names from prominent local families show that music-making was an important part of women's private and professional lives. These include Ellen Orne Clark, Harriet Orne Clark, Harriet Elkins, Rebecca Taylor Pickman, Sally Pickman, Harriet Rose, and Lydia Very.

Series I. Vocal Music includes all the manuscripts containing parts for voice.

Subseries A. Accompanied comprises all manuscripts for voice with accompaniment whether organ, piano or unknown keyboard; and manuscripts containing a mix of songs and instrumental tunes.

Subseries B. Unaccompanied contains all the manuscripts notated for one or more voices without instrumental accompaniment. Manuscripts containing a mix of accompanied and unaccompanied works have been classed as accompanied. This distinction reflects the historical shift from sacred choral music without accompaniment, preferred by the area's first European settlers, to choral music with organ.

Regarding the printed item, William Billings's "The Lark" and "The Bird" (2 leaves, engraved by John Norman), bound in at back of "Choir singer's part book" manuscript (Box 3, Folder 8), only seven other copies of this item are listed in Britton, Lowens, and Crawford's American Sacred Music Imprints, 1698-1810 (American Antiquarian Society, 1990; see no. 103), and this is the only located copy not bound with a full-length Billings tunebook; it also appears to be the only located copy with the two pieces in this order.

Series II. Instrumental Music includes all the manuscripts containing a preponderance of music for one or more instruments. These are mainly melody parts, duets, and trios in various genres; there are a few bass lines notated separately, which may reflect the practice of improvising over a "ground bass." Some of the note books classed here include one or a few songs, which may have been played rather than sung.

Items without unique titles have been listed in the finding aid with the predominant genre contained in the item first. Many of the manuscripts contain more than one genre, frequently including both keyboard music and songs with keyboard accompaniment. Most likely, the keyboard was a piano of some type. This combination reflects the expectation that people of the middle class would be accomplished at both playing piano and singing, and the practice of teaching both arts in the same lesson.

Series III. Dances includes manuscripts of caller's instructions for the figures danced to sets of reels, jigs, marches, hornpipes, and other tunes represented in Series II. These figures are named either as specific dances (such as the Virginia Reel) or by genres such as Cotillion. Series IV. Catalogs includes hand written catalogs of the Essex Institute Musical Library and the Salem Musical Library. These lists are primarily inventories of published works and music periodicals.