About The Templeton Collection

To further enhance the use and preservation of the collection, the sheet music will be digitized and made available on the Charles H. Templeton Sheet Music Collection web site. The web site, which was introduced on August 15, 2000, contains only a sampling of the sheet music. The digitization project just got underway in August 2000. Digitizing 22,000 pieces of sheet music will take several months to complete but the staff at Mitchell Memorial Library is enthusiastic and confident that this project will be completed as quickly as possible. Charles Templeton arranged the collection into categories prior to the donation (i.e. Rags, Popular Music, War Songs, Blues, Foxtrots, Show Tunes, etc.). The collection will be housed and made available electronically using this same method of organization.

The major reason for digitizing the sheet music collection is probably two fold: 1) to preserve an entire era of music and make it available to future historians 2) to provide researchers whether they are musicologist studying the evolution of music by reviewing the sheet music from the early 19th century and its influence on modem music, art historians studying the exquisite artwork on the sheet music covers, or a sociologist studying the changes in society with Internet access to a rich collection of sheet music.

No one can describe the rich history or importance of the collection better than the man who donated the material Charles H. Templeton. "There are many things to be learned from this collection, whether you are a music major or a business major or studying marketing. The sheet music tells a world of its own about advertising." Templeton explained. "This collection is based around what made those changes. For example, all popular music has at one time or another been considered unacceptable. If you can tell me the music your mother didn't like you to listen to, that will about tell how old you are, " Templeton said.

"Ragtime, which was the popular music in the early 1900s, started out basically being played in the brothels and was considered unacceptable by most parents then. But now we use Scott Joplin's ragtime in a movie soundtrack," continues the music historian. "This is one of the few collections, if not the only one, which carries through all of those changes, "adds Templeton. "You started out with blues and then ragtime evolved from that and then the Dixieland sound emerged and the big band, and from that came the forerunner of modem jazz. And the interesting part of it is that as this music evolved it progressed up the Mississippi River."