Artist Resources: The Music and the American Revolution Competition

To help guide you toward producing a fantastic original composition or interpretation for the Music and the American Revolution Competition, here are some resources that we think will help you as you consider your project. This contest is co-sponsored by the American Battlefield Trust and the Ray and Vera Conniff Foundation.

Audio Collections

The links below take you to both historic music and reinterpretations of music from the 18^th and 19^th centuries. While not all directly linked to the Revolutionary Era, they will give you a sense of how other contemporary artists have bridged the musical gap between the 1770s and 1780s and today.

• For recordings of military fife and drum music, see the United States Army's Recordings Collection.
• For a set list of instrumental Revolutionary era compositions, see the American Battlefield Trust's Revolutionary War Music collection on SoundCloud.
• For emotive music that emphasizes themes of political freedom in the Revolutionary era, see American Revolutionary War Songs to Cultivate the Sensations of Freedom from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.
• For songs from the Revolutionary era that speak to the nation’s founding ideals, see The Birth of Liberty: Music of the American Revolution from New World Records.  
• For a project that reinterprets historic music from the Early Republic, see Songs for Harnessing Harmony on Spotify. To learn about the inspiration for this playlist, see Harnessing Harmony in the Early Republic with Billy Coleman.
• For powerfully evocative music about the African slave trade see Slavery At Sea: The Book Soundtrack on Bandcamp.
• For military music connected to Massachusetts militiamen see Music of the Revolutionary War by Sturbridge Colonial Militia

Sheet Music and Other Collections

The links below take you to collections of sheet music from the Revolutionary Era. The number of compositions is huge, so we’ve picked out a few great ones to get you started on your own search. All are in the public domain.

• For a large collection of sheet music, see the Library of Congress' Early American Sheet Music Collection.  Some relevant example include:
  • The Wounded Soldier
  • The Kentucky Volunteer
  • Adams & Washington
  • The Green Mountain Farmer
• For sheet music in the Massachusetts Historical Society collection, see their ABIGAIL Library Catalog. Some relevant example here include:
  • Drummer's Book of Music, circa 1778
  • Battle of Bunker Hill
  • Two favorite Songs made on the Evacuation of the Town of Boston by the British Troops, on the 17th of March 1776
• For guidance on obtaining materials from the Massachusetts Historical Society, contact Reference Reproductions.
• For a collection of compositions from the Colonial and Revolutionary eras, see Colonial Music Institute at George Washington's Mount Vernon.
• To explore an extensive and insightful bibliography of Music of the American Revolution from our judge Billy Coleman, see this bibliography from Oxford Bibliographies.