To celebrate the 125th anniversary, this album offers 18 pieces of “souvenir music” from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. The tracks have little to do with the music actually heard at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition; instead, the music on this album capitalized on the Fair craze in Chicago and across the country. Along with buttons, medals, brochures, postcards, and other memorabilia that flooded the market, this sheet music offered a musical “souvenir” of one’s time at the Fair. Some of these pieces were made popular in local theaters, either played by orchestras or performed by popular singers on the vaudeville stage. Others were simply meant to be taken home and played on the parlor piano. They provide a glimpse into the way the visitors understood and remembered this profound experience.
Composer and musicologist Don Meyer, Professor of Music at Lake Forest College, has written original scores for a number of independent films and rescored several movies from the Silent Era. In addition, he has composed incidental music and sound collages for theater productions, dance troupes, online literary journals, and television commercials. He has also written articles about film music and music in American life. He is the program note annotator for the Mid-Columbia Symphony Orchestra in Washington State.
