Music Special Collections

The McGill Music Library’s collection of 19th-century French sheet music contains over 19,000 pieces from the 1820s to the early 1900s. Genres range from the romance to the mélodie, as well as chansonnettes and chansons from the earliest cafés-concerts in the 1840s-50s to those pieces sung in the music-halls beginning in the 1860s and the cabarets artistiques in the 1880s. The collection therefore offers scholars an exceptional opportunity to trace the origins and development of many popular music genres and sub-genres.