Parlor Music

A type of popular music intended to be performed in the parlors of houses, usually by amateur singers and pianists. Disseminated as sheet music, its heyday came in the 19th century, due to a steady increase in the number of households with enough surplus cash to purchase musical instruments and instruction in music, and with the leisure time and cultural motivation to engage in recreational music-making.

As the 19th century wore on, more songs were newly composed specifically for use by amateurs at home, and these pieces (written originally as parlor songs, rather than being adapted from other genres) began to develop a style all their own—similar in melodic and harmonic content to art songs of the day, but shorter and simpler in structure and making fewer technical demands on singer and accompanist. 

Popularity waned in the 20th century as the phonograph record and radio replaced sheet music as the most common method of dissemination. In contrast to the chord-based classical music era, parlor music features melodies that are harmonically independent or not determined by the harmony. This produces parlor chords, many of them added tone chords if not extended such as the dominant thirteenth, added sixth, and major dominant ninth.