Historical information

This is an early 20th century piece of music, a popular song for piano and voice. It was composed by Carrie Jacobs-Bond (1862-1946), the first great American woman popular composer. She was born in Wisconsin and was an invalid for most of her life. Her second husband died after seven years of marriage and she struggled to support herself and a child. She became one of the most popular composers of her time and her song ‘A Perfect Day’ has been a concert favourite for a 100 years. The words of the song, ‘God Remembers When the World Forgets’, were written by Clifton Bingham who was born in Bristol, England and was an author of verses for children’s picture books as well as a writer of lyrics for popular songs. He was most famous for the words of ‘Love’s Old Sweet Song’. Grice’s Piano Store was at 92 Queen Street in Brisbane.

Significance

This is an interesting piece of music as it represents the type of music popular early in the 20th century and the cover is artistic and charming.

Physical description

This is a four-page piece of sheet music (cover, frontispiece and three pages of music). The pages are of a creamy colour, perhaps once white. The second page has a three-stanza poem (‘How many gardens in this world of ours…’) printed in black and the musical notations are in black print. The front cover is multi-coloured, with a sketch of a rose branch with several roses (sketched by ‘Herbert’) This page has two pale green borders and a shop stamp. The back page has information on the publisher. The pages are in good condition, though there is some tearing on the folds.

Inscriptions & markings

Front cover stamp: ‘Pianos, Grice Brisbane’
Front cover: ‘Herbert, Poem by Clifton Bingham, Music by Carrie Jacobs-Bond, 60, 2/- net, High,*Low, Medium’