Archive of Seventeenth-Century Italian Madrigals and Arias
This archive contains critical editions of seventeenth-century Italian madrigals and arias, together with introductions to the editions in Italian, German and English, and translations of the texts into English and German.
BandMusic PDF Library preserves and shares band music from the Golden Age of the American Town Band. If you are looking for public domain music to play with your school band, community band or other group, you'll find it here–marches, waltzes, rags, theater music, cornet solos, trombone features, and much more.
The Chopin collection at the University of Chicago Library includes over 400 first and early printed editions of musical compositions by Frédéric Chopin, maintained in the Special Collections Research Center. Because Chopin's works were often published concurrently in several countries with variant texts, scholars can establish a sequence of publication by comparing a range of printings. Chopin Early Editions consist of digitized images of all scores in the University of Chicago Library's Chopin collection. Users can search or browse Chopin Early Editions via a variety of data points, including titles, genres, and plate numbers.
Classical Scores Library Best Bet
The Classical Scores Library from Alexander Street is a series of four volumes with a mission to provide a reliable and authoritative source for scores of the classical canon, as well as a resource for the discovery of lesser-known contemporary works. The collections encompass all major classical musical genres and time periods from the middle ages to the twenty-first-century. With full, study, piano, and vocal scores, this comprehensive collection will enhance the study of music history, performance, composition and theory for a variety of scholars.
Classical String Quartets (1770-1840)
The string quartet, for two violins, viola and violoncello, was one of the most widely-cultivated genres of chamber music during the Classical period, with the Viennese masters Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven all contributing substantially to the literature. The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University has about forty collections of string quartets in parts dating from this time (about 1770-1840), most, though not all complete, and representing composers whose works are rarely found in modern editions. Digitization of these parts makes newly available for performance, study and recording a large and varied repertoire of works for this instrumental ensemble.
Early Music Online holds digitised volumes of 16th-century anthologies of printed music, from holdings at the British Library. These digitised volumes contain musical compositions, which have been individually indexed. The volumes mainly consist of partbooks of vocal polyphony, but also include some early printed tablatures for keyboard or plucked string instruments. They include music printed in Italy, Germany, France and England.
Historic American Sheet Music (1850 - 1920)
The David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University holds a significant collection of 19th and early 20th-century American sheet music. The Historic American Sheet Music Project provides access to digital images of 3042 pieces from the collection, published in the United States between 1850 and 1920.
The International Music Score Library Project is a project for the creation of a virtual library of public domain music scores based on the wiki principle; it is also more than that. Users can exchange musical ideas through the site, submit their own compositions, or listen to other people's compositions; this makes IMSLP an ever-growing musical community of music lovers for music lovers.
The Juilliard Manuscript Collection
The Juilliard Manuscript Collection is an extraordinary collection of 140 priceless autograph manuscripts, sketches, engravers proofs and first editions. The collection includes materials of great interest to performers and scholars.
The LiederNet Archive is the world’s largest reference archive of texts and translations of art songs and choral works.
The Mutopia Project offers sheet music editions of classical music for free download. These are based on editions in the public domain.
New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives
The New York Philharmonic Leon Levy Digital Archives currently comprises more than four million pages, including printed programs, marked conducting scores, business documents, and photographs. Growing continually, the scope of the online collection is every document in the New York Philharmonic Archives from 1842 through 1970. This includes correspondence, marked scores and parts, contracts, and minutes from meetings of the Board of Directors — as well as all public documents from 1970 through today (e.g., marketing materials, press releases, and annual reports).
The Sheet Music Consortium provides tools and services that promote access to and use of online sheet music collections by scholars, students, and the general public.