George William Warren: The Sacred and the Secular

Discoveries in the collections of the Albany Institute of History & Art have yielded several pieces of sheet music authored by George William Warren (1828–1902), a little-known Albany composer who enjoyed success in the composition of both popular and sacred music.

Following the purchase of several additional pieces of Warren’s sheet music, historians at the Albany Institute discovered scrapbooks containing broadsides, announcements, and reviews of concerts related to Warren’s music. Further research identified the only known photograph of Warren, in the New York Public Library’s Gottschalk Collection, as well as more material on both sacred and secular music, reviews, obituaries, family genealogy, and family business. The exhibition included several of these items to reveal the prominence of Warren’s compositions on the American music scene in the nineteenth century.