List of works by Joseph William Postlewaite


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This list is manually maintained, therefore some of the available pieces may not yet be linked from this page. For an automatically generated alphabetical list of all available pieces, please see
Category:Postlewaite, Joseph William.

A list of works in the composer category that are not included here can be found on this page.
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The table below gives the following information (where applicable):

  • Title — as used on IMSLP.
  • Key — the principal key of the work.
  • Date — the year(s) of composition/first publication, where known.
  • Genre(s) — as used by IMSLP's categorization system.
  • Incipit & Notes — the initial sequence of notes; concerning related works, completeness, authorship, etc.

Although clearly written for his band to play, Postlewaite's music was predominantly published in piano arrangements, several works being reissued as "duetts." As per the original instrumentation, Samuel A. Floyd, Jr. writes: "[n]o record has been found of the instrumentation of Postlewaite's sixteen-piece brass band..., nor of those of other of Postlewaite's various aggregations. Further, we cannot determine their instrumentations by observing those of other such groups of the period, since no standard instrumentation was in existence. Exceptions were perhaps some of the army bands which were authorized as sixteen-piece units. Photographs of such army bands show, generally, twelve over-the-shoulder brasses (except, in some cases, bell-front cornets) and four percussion. The brasses included cornets, alto and tenor horns, valve and slide trombones, baritones, and helicons or tubas; the percussion sections generally were comprised of snare drums (or one snare drum and one tenor drum), bass drum, and cymbals. We can assume that Postlewaite's band was either identical or similar" ("A Black Composer" 126-127).

Title Key Date Genre(s) Incipit & Notes
Almira Waltz D major pub. 1849, rev. 1880 Waltz Page 1
Galena Waltz C major pub. 1850 Waltz Page 1
Annie Polka-Mazurka D major pub. 1854 Polka
Mazurka
Page 1
Recreation Schottisch F major pub. 1854 Ecossaise Page 1
St. Louis National Guards Quickstep C major pub. 1855 Quickstep Page 1
Orange Schottisch C major pub. 1857 Ecossaise Page 1
Red Petticoat Mazurka C major pub. 1858 Mazurka Page 1
General Greys Quick March C major pub. 1861 March
Quickstep
also referred to as Grays Quick Step
key signature erroneously listed as G major in Descriptive Catalogue of Sheet Music and Musical Works (St. Louis: Balmer & Weber, 1867 or 1868?), p.253
Page 1
Veiled Prophets Grand March C major pub. 1880 March Page 1

Source(s)

Floyd, Jr., Samuel A. "A Black Composer in Nineteenth-Century St. Louis." 19th-Century Music, vol. 4, no. 2, Autumn 1980, pp. 121-133. JSTOR, doi:10.2307/746710.

Floyd, Jr., Samuel A. "J. W. Postlewaite of St. Louis: A Search for His Identity." The Black Perspective in Music, vol. 6, no. 2, Autumn 1978, pp. 151-167. JSTOR, doi:10.2307/1214172.