Christopher Smith wrote:
Actually, now that I think about it, I have a few old (pre-60's) song books, and most of the arrangements are far superior to what we get nowadays. There doesn't seem to be much thought or effort put into piano-vocal arrangements since about 1960 or so.
These can still be found, often at quite advantageous prices, at some used booksellers, and thrift stores. Further, while there may not be a songbook, these types of stores will often have a stack of individual folios, and will sometimes sell a whole stack for a very modest price; I bought a stack of organ music in such situations once by offering the proprietor "a couple bucks for that box of music on the piano", and that box of music turned out to be a couple of thousand dollars worth of imported editions of organ music. I think there are a couple considerations which explain the apparent difference in quality: it appears to me that in songbooks issued up to the 1950's were assembled from prints of the originally published sheet music, and the general level of music literacy among those who were musically literate was higher in 1960 than it is today, when for too many, the pinnacle of music literacy is knowing how to download music into an iPod, and how to change the battery.
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