Jun 12 at 12:00 PM - Sale 2708 -

Sale 2708 - Lot 140

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(MUSIC.) David Claypoole Johnston, illustrator. The Log House: A Song Presented to the Western Minstrel. 22 pages, 13 x 9¼ inches, on 11 detached sheets including elaborate lithographed cover; moderate foxing, 3 short repaired closed tears. Boston, 14 March 1826
Request Condition Report Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

The composer Anthony Philip Heinrich (1781-1861) was a Bohemian merchant stranded in Boston in 1810 by a business failure. He launched a new career as a violinist and composer in the classical tradition, and gained fame after drawing inspiration from his travels in western Pennsylvania and a residence in Bardstown, Kentucky. Though he had emigrated to the United States later in life, his work was imbued with the spirit of the frontier, featuring improvisation and chromatic passages, and he was perhaps the most prominent American composer before the Civil War.

This piece features music by Heinrich and words by John Mills Brown, filled with frontier romanticism. It features several instructions to the musician offering room for individual interpretation. The early lithographed cover by famed illustrator D.C. Johnston is perhaps the greatest draw, showing Heinrich playing the violin at his crude Kentucky log cabin, surrounded by the scattered music to his most popular songs, as an admiring African American banjo player peers around the corner. A pair of vignettes show Heinrich's flight from hostile Indians in Louisville and his peaceful arrival in Boston. None traced at auction.

Also in This Catalogue