Card of the Day - 2022-01-26

This card is because Handel`s work “The Messiah” is the most requested music on Desert Island, with 119 the castaways choosing it, though they do not always choose the same section of the music.

Thanks to the collector who supplied this card, but wishes to remain anonymous. He also wrote us this short piece about the cards, which I am sure you will enjoy...

This is just one of the cards that were published by “T. Presser Phila”, or Theodore Presser, whose company is the oldest music publishers in the United States of America, founded in 1883, and still going strong, as well as still being based in Philadelphia, currently in Malvern.

Until 2004 it was still very much a family business, but then it was acquired by Carl Fischer.

Theodore Presser himself was born in 1848, and his first job was at an iron foundry, as just a teenager, when he found himself called on to join in the secondary occupation of the works, which was making cannonballs for the American Civil War. However this did not work out, so he left, one theory is that the work was very heavy and he started to suffer with ill health.

Instead of this he got a part time job selling tickets for a local opera company, and this led to him finding employment at a music store, where he worked his way up to becoming the sheet music manager.. Along the way, he decided he would like to get better educated in music, and eventually he started publishing his own magazine on musical topics, as well as the production of sheet music.

These cards may not have been issued by him at all, because it only has him as a publisher. We also do not know how they were issued, there is a thought that they might have been sold commercially, but as they are all printed with “Reward Card” it is thought that they most probably had something to do with teaching, or with attendance at music schools.

There is also some doubt as to the title because the cards are untitled; however every card shows the birthplace of the composer, and also a facsimile of their signature so perhaps those provides a clue to the real title. This card is the most interesting because the front name is Haendel, with an extra “E” but the reverse does not repeat that spelling and goes for the more normal Handel. He did spell his name with that extra “E” from time to time so the thought is that this illustration of him had that version of his name as a title and so it was just copied off by the artist who made the drawing for the card.

Another unusual card shows Cecile Chaminade, though sometimes this appears in listings as “Cecil” but she was a lady composer, one of Queen Victoria`s favourites. And she is so far the only lady composer in the set.

I have made a list of all those known so far – it seems to have stuck at thirty four, which seems an odd number, so anyone knowing of any others, please do let me know.

• Johann Sebastian Bach

• Bartholdy

• Ludwig Van Beethoven

• Georges Bizet

• J. Brahms

• Cecile Chaminade

• Frederic Francois Chopin

• Claude Debussy

• Antonin Dvorak

• Edward Elgar

• Christoph W. Von Gluck

• Charles Gounod

• Edward Grieg

• George Frederic Handel

• Josef Haydn

• Franz Liszt

• Edward MacDowell

• Jules Massenet

• Felix Mendelssohn

• Maurice Moszkowski

• Modest Moussorgsky

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

• Anton Rubinstein

• Nicolas Rimsky-Korsakow

• Gioacchino Rossini

• Anton Rubinstein

• Camille Saint-Saens

• Franz Schubert

• Robert Schumann

• Jean Sibelius

• P.J. Tschaikowsky

• Guiseppe Verdi

• Richard Wagner

• C.M. V Weber;