We are a band music publishing company.

We have been in business for 138 years.

We are at our warehouse, which houses at the moment over 7000 different products that we published over the years.

Anywhere from the very first semester beginning bands in the fifth or sixth grade, all the way up through college, university, adult and professional bands.

And we shipped music to Japan, many European countries, Australia, China, South America.

just all over the world.

Barnhouse was started by a man named C.L.

Barnhouse, Charles Lloyd Barnhouse.

He was apparently a very good cornetist.

The problem was, he was sometimes in bands where he wasn't getting paid regularly.

And so he happened to be in Des Moines playing with a musical comedy show, and he hadn't gotten paid for 2 or 3 weeks, and they got ticked off and said, I quit at the same time.

He had been composing music, but not having a whole lot of luck getting things published.

So he thought, I'm going to try to start my own publishing company.

So this is the very first publication from the CL Barnhouse Company, a march called The Battle of Shiloh that was written by Carl Barnhouse.

This was number one in our catalog, the very first piece of music that the company ever published.

You have to think back into the terms of 1886, when this company started.

Music had to be engraved into a sheet of metal, of zinc or lead, using tools that were shaped for different kinds of musical symbols.

If you wanted to make an eighth note, for example, you would use one tool for the note head.

You'd use another tool for the note stem.

You use another tool for the flag on the eighth note.

So just to make one note, you'd have to use three different tools and punch them into the sheet of lead in reverse.

Because all of the printing was done as a reverse impression.

So it was a very painstaking process to produce the engraving plates for music publications back in those days.

Good evening everyone, and welcome to downtown Oskaloosa.

And an evening of music with the one and only Oskaloosa City Band.

My name is .........

In the days before radio and television and even sound recordings, people, if they wanted to hear music, they had one of two choices.

They could go someplace where it was being performed, or they could make it themselves.

Much of the music we perform each week is published locally at CL Barnhouse House, located on the north edge of town.

And so often in smaller communities, especially, there would be a town band that would play concerts, perhaps during the summertime, or perform for community events, or be in parades.

And that was the only opportunity that a lot of average people had to hear music.

Written by C.L.

Barnhouse, composer Robert Sheldon.

This is Hill Country Holiday.

But it was all about entertainment.

I mean, people went to band concerts because they wanted to have a good time.

They wanted to enjoy the music.

They wanted to hear music that was tuneful, that was melodic, that was rhythmic.

It was all about entertainment.

And if people didn't enjoy what they heard, they wouldn't come back.

So the bands played what audiences wanted to hear.

So when the company started, he started off publishing just his own music, and then later other composers came to him and we began publishing the music of others.

We've always been associated with circus music, and circus performances of 100 years ago were accompanied by live music, and many of the musicians who led the circus bands and who wrote music published with us.

The most famous of those composers, Carl King, was a circus musician for nine years.

His career there culminated with the leadership of the Barnum and Bailey Circus Band, and he composed over 200 pieces of music that we published.

This is a picture of the 1913 Barnum and Bailey Circus Band.

And this fellow right back here is Carl King playing the baritone.

And this is the band that Carl King wrote, Barnum and Bailey, his favorite for earlier that year.

That's the most famous march that we ever published.

It's probably the most famous circus march ever written, and when you hear it, you immediately think of a circus.

I have a very strange history with this company.

Band sort of became my thing in high school.

I wasn't involved in sports, I wasn't involved in other activities.

Band was kind of my home.

And so as I became interested in the music, I started looking for recordings of band music.

And then I decided I was going to start collecting this kind of music.

So I started purchasing band music from different places.

And one of those was Barnhouse, and I got really excited about the circus music aspect of it, and Carl King and I finally wrote to the people of Barnhouse, and I asked, is there any kind of a list of his music?

And the response was, well, we have this, this archive of music, but it's kind of disorganized and I don't know what compelled me to do this, but I said, what if I came up there and went through your archive and got it organized for you?

And Bob Barnhouse senior, who was a grandson of the founder, I said, okay, that'd be fun.

Bob Senior gave me a key to the building.

I was here for a week and he said, just come and go as you please lock up when you leave.

So here's a 17 year old kid going through the music art that and then over the years, I started my teaching career and I started doing some other things and music and stayed in touch with the folks here.

And in the late 90s, they asked me to start writing arrangements for them to publish.

And so a couple of years later, I was in the middle of a job transition in Saint Louis, and he said, did you ever think about moving to Iowa?

And so I said, I'd love to talk about that.

So I was 15 when I first came to the Barnhouse Company, and I'm 62 now, so it's been a lifetime thing.

I feel honored to be a part of this, getting to actually have a job that I love so much.

I'm just a lucky guy.