From Bach to the Beatles, the musical topics represented on postage stamps are as broad as the field of music itself. Stamps celebrate opera, musical theater, jazz and the blues. They may depict an Azerbaijani folk instrument, a violin by Stradivari, an electric guitar, or an accordion. They commemorate the Vienna Symphony, Celtic music, and Scott Joplin's rags. Composers, conductors, and performers in many musical genres are all portrayed on stamps.
With postage stamps forming the central core, a new exhibit in the Mills Music Library illustrates some of the many associations between music and the mail, and looks at classical, folk, and popular music traditions.
One of the many fascinating connections is the post horn. Beginning in the middle ages, continuing for centuries, and long before America Online announced "You've got mail," the port horn was used by postal carriers to signal the arrival of the mail coach in towns and villages across Europe. Today, its widespread use as a continental postal symbol pays tribute to its former pragmatic use. The exhibit includes a number of stamps and facsimiles of 19th century watercolors bearing images of the post horn, classical compositions which include the post horn, as well as a modern day post horn from the collection of Douglas Hill.
Johann Sebastian Bach, like Mozart, Beethoven and other giants of western classical music, have been featured on postage stamps for generations. Major observances of a composer's birth or death have often provided the impetus for a country to issue a stamp in their honor. There are several Bach stamps in the exhibit issued by the countries of Belgium, Domenica, East Germany (DDR), Germany, Guyana, Mali, and Sierra Leone.
Popular music topics are represented by stamps honoring blues musicians, the Beatles, and popular song composers. Folk music and folk instruments are represented by stamps from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Germany, Ireland, and Senegal.
The exhibit features stamps from the collection of Erik Brelid, an employee in the General Library System who works in Central Technical Services.