Music: Special collections

The Popular sheet music collection in Special collections includes over 20,000 popular sheet music titles. A Finding List is available.

Star dust / by Hoagy Carmichael ; piano transcription by James Matté. (New York : Mills Music, 1930, c1929). "Star Dust" began as an instrumental, "Barnyard Shuffle." The lyrics were added in 1929 by Mitchell Parish. The most widely covered song of the twentieth century, Nat King Cole’s 1957 version is perhaps the best. The song ends with the words, "My stardust melody, the memory of love’s refrain."

Most of the music dates from 1900 to 1970 but includes  a substantial number of examples from the nineteenth century. It is representative of the many and varied forms of music that have been popular, including show tunes, jazz, dance, etc. from Great Britain, the United States and Australia. Much of the collection are popular songs from overseas that have been published in Australia and feature Australian stage performers' portraits on the covers.

Catalogue of the exhibition of sheet music from the Rare Books Collection, Stardust Melodies.