Music to support the war effort flooded the market. Music publishers offered songbooks “chock full of ammunition for building morale at the Front and at Home” as well as separate pieces of sheet music. Mostly written for piano with vocal accompaniment, these popular songs urged young men to fulfill their patriotic duty to join the military, honored war heroes, and offered comfort to those left behind on the homefront. Not surprisingly, upbeat lyrics and tempos predominated, but a few songs addressed the devastation of the battlefield and the difficult adjustments to the peacetime world faced by both soldiers and civilians.
The curators of Together We Win : The Philadelphia Homefront during the First World War compiled a playlist of WWI song sheets in the Library Company’s collection. Explore the nostalgic melodies that accompanied the First World War: http://togetherwewin.librarycompany.org/
