Parlour Music

Parlour music is the body of popular song written in the 19th and early 20th centuries for performance in the home, around the parlour piano, and sold as sheet music rather than as recordings. Its repertory of sentimental ballads, comic songs and drawing-room pieces by writers such as *Stephen Foster*, *Henry Clay Work* and *Charles K. Harris* favoured singable melodies, piano accompaniments within amateur reach and verses suited to family performance. Before radio and the record industry, the parlour song was the principal medium through which popular hits circulated.