ABSTRACT
Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American music magazines functioned to a considerable extent as advertising venues for a wide variety of products and services. Among these were musical instruments as well as lessons offered by local music schools and recent sheet-music publications. But advertising was not restricted to paid announcements. Much unpaid “advertising” was religious or pedagogical or intellectual in character. Thus a magazine might promulgate the ideas of its editor or contributors about the place of music in Christian worship, or music and elementary education, or the significance of Western musical history. A great deal of this kind of advertising was—should we call it “sociological”? Certainly it was social, because it promoted values associated with certain social strata or classes or races even as it promoted the activities of “appropriate” individuals and organizations.
