Music and Postage Stamps:
What Do They Have in Common?

Music is the universal language and stamp collecting is the universal hobby. October is National Stamp Collecting Month. Over the years, many composers have been featured on postage stamps all over the world.

Do you know who the first composer to be on a postage stamp was? If you answered Paderewski, you are correct! He was honored as a statesman though, not as a musician. Paderewski was appointed Premier in January 1919 and three weeks later elected the first president of the Polish Republic. It was not until 1922 that musicians were pictured on stamps to honor them specifically as composers.

Austria issued a beautiful postal set in 1922 for the first in a series to honor seven composers, Austrian by birth or adoption. They were: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner, Johann Strauss, and Wolf. The more recent the date of birth, the higher was their face value of the stamp. In 1926 Germany issued a stamp to honor Beethoven and Bach. These were commemoratives and intended to honor those who had brought fame to the German people. Next was the blue Chopin stamp issued in Poland on March 1, 1927. Hungary honored her composers in 1932. The stamp issued was of Franz Liszt. In 1934 along came Belgium with a stamp on the centenary of Peter Benoit's birth. Then in 1935 the Bach-Handel Festival was held in Germany, and the German government issued a set of three stamps picturing Bach, Schultz and Handel. In November, 1936, France presented collectors with a portrait of Hector Berlioz. Finally in 1941, America honored five of her composers. They were:

Stephen Foster... green, one-cent stamp John Phillip Sousa... orange, two-cent stamp Victor Herbert...purple, three-cent stamp Edward MacDowell... blue, five-cent stamp Ethlebert Nevin... brown, ten-cent stamp

Many other composers have been honored and are now on postage stamps. Why not start your collection of their music and stamps today?

On the cover of the book, The Life & Music of Edward MacDowell, the postage stamp honoring him is displayed. One of his famous piano solos is "Improvisation, Opus 46, No. 4," which you may download using Acrobat Reader and play for your own enjoyment. If you have the appropriate player software on your computer, you may also download either a MIDI file (6 KB) or a Quicktime sound file (6 KB) to listen to a computer rendition of the piece. Admittedly, it's not performance quality, lacking much of the expression you'd hear when a person plays the piece, but you can get an idea of what it sounds like.

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