From Camp-Fire Musings by William Cunningham Gray, 1894.

From La Morale Merveilleuse by P. Christian, 1844.

"A probable combustion," from Elizabeth College's Caps and Belles yearbook, 1901.  (For some unbelievably weird yearbook imagery, see our How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.)

From The Ball of Yarn, 1854.

From St. Nicholas magazine, 1877.

"There is dark, and there is light": a musical Yin/Yang from Beauty and the Beast: A Humorous Cantata by Edmund Rogers, 1882.  Note how the sharp and double-sharp symbols offer shimmers of light.

You've heard of "a little night music," but here's how it's properly notated.  From Очеркъ тысячелѣтней борьбы Балтійско-Полабскаго Славянства съ Нѣмцами до возрожденія Сербо-Лужицкаго племени, 1897.

"On that key of hopelessness she ended," from Hamilton of King's by Alice Price, 1890.

"I'm/he's sole captain of this fine vessel.  Blow, my bonny boys, blow."  From Home-Theatricals Made Easy, or, Busy, Happy, and Merry by Frances Elizabeth Callow, 1891.

Luckily, our organ has a stop for "Trumpets behind the scenes."  From The Echo, An Opera in One Act by Frank Patterson, 1922.

She's "at it," from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

The music of the future will be notated on cats' whiskers, as we see in The Bashful Earthquake by Oliver Herford (1899).

From Bachelor Ballads and Other Lazy Lyrics by Harry Spurr, 1899.

Revealed: here's why swing music originated in the big city.  From The Saturday Evening Post, 1920.

From A History of Advertising from the Earliest Times by Henry Sampson, 1874.

In the key of F, presumably.  From A Little Tour in Ireland by Samuel Reynolds Hole, 1892.

Did you know that musical scores can have drop caps, too?  These are from Robin Hood: A Collection of Poems, Songs, and Ballads by Joseph Ritson, 1884.