O Mundo Musical [Música impressa] : polka - por Filippe da Silva

This sheet music by Filippe da Silva is an advertising edition released by the Fábrica Nacional a Vapor de Bolachas e Biscoitos (National Steam Factory of Biscuits and Cookies) for its customers. The cover page states that this piece is dedicated to the new newspaper that shares the same title. On the back page we seem to get more details on this newspaper. It seems to be a weekly fashion journal, dedicated to Portuguese and Brazilian women, containing various forms of literature (biographies, poetry, short stories, riddles), music excerpts, embroidery patterns, and more. This back page also specifies the prices of these journals. 

This piece of music and the described newspaper are examples of how mass mediation, specifically in the realm of entertainment, began to pervade people's social and personal lives. We see the specific marketing towards a female audience, providing various forms of entertainment and craft for the domestic sphere. Advertising to this audience, especially with sheet music and the other material mentioned, seems to have been a very lucrative market. 

According to João Silva, who wrote Entertaining Lisbon: Music, Theater, and Modern Life in the Late 19th Century, “The domestic realm, especially as represented by upper- and middle-class women, was crucial for the development of the entertainment market during late 19th- and early 20th-century Portugal. Female domestic life included activities such as collecting, domestic music making, embroidering, and reading. The piano, the dominant instrument in bourgeois leisure, occupied a unique place in everyday domesticity, and the women and girls of a household often played music first heard in the theaters.”

Location: Lisbon, Portugal