Searching for Scores and Recordings
- Performances and exams
- Modern or scholarly performance editions for contemporary music practice and historically informed music performance practice.
- Musicology
- Scholarly editions with critical commentary, facsimile manuscripts and early editions, and historical editions.
- Theory and compositional research
- Full and/or miniature scores for analysis.
Editions matter. A 19th or early 20th century edition of a Beethoven sonata is important for analyzing the performance practice of the time for your history research, or for checking fingerings by the editing pianist, but is not always an appropriate edition to use for your end of year exam.
- Do you need an 'urtext' edition for your exam?
('Urtext' is used in German/Viennese publications, meaning the score is based on the original manuscripts or sources to most closely reflect the original intentions of the composer.) - Does the song need to be in the original key or transposed?
- Do you need an early edition of a work for your music history research?
Particularly for pre-20th century music, discuss with your instrumental teacher or lecturer about what type of edition you may be expected to use, or ask a music librarian for assistance.
Click on the tabs on this page for tips on searching and browsing for music scores and sound recordings.
Searching for scores can be challenging, but here are a few tips to get you started:
- Performers and composers are treated as authors in library catalogues and search tools
- Combine composers/performers, works, numbers (e.g. op. 105, k.545, BWV. 223), and keys for a more precise search. For example, search for Mozart + sonata + K. 545 + C major to locate Mozart's piano sonata no. 16 in C Major.
- Remove terms if you are getting too many results and limit by format to musical score
- Scores are published in multiple languages and often using different numbering, so titles vary for the same work. For example, Mozart's piano sonata no. 1 in C Major is published as:
- Sonata no. 1, C major
- Sonata no. 15, C major
- Sonata no. 16, C major
- Sonate C-Dur für Klavier
- Is the score you want to find part of a larger work, or in a collection or anthology? Library catalogues and search tools do not always describe individual pieces, so you need to search for the larger item just to be sure. For example:
- To find "Casta Diva", from Norma (Bellini), you will need to search for Norma + Bellini to be sure you have found all available versions
- To find "Die Krähe" from Winterreise (a song cycle by Schubert), you will need to search for Winterreise + Schubert to be sure you have found all available versions
Some online audio visual resources and sound recordings can be found in the catalog. Using the Audio Visual catalog filter greatly helps locate these.
Searching for recordings is fairly straightforward, but here are some tips for locating them:
- Try combining authors (composers, performers, ensembles), with musical works/album titles/songs for an effective search. Here are some examples:
- Shostakovich + Bernstein + New York Philharmonic + Symphony 5
- Arcade Fire + Reflektor
- Fischer-Dieskau + Schubert + An die Musik
Online Scores
- IMSLP: Petrucci Music LibraryThe Petrucci Music Library from the IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project) includes 500,000 scores that were published before 1923 and thus lie within the public domain. These scores are available as PDF files and can be downloaded to a computer or thumb drive. Additionally, 3,000 recordings are available as streamed audio files.
- WLSCM - Web Library of Seventeenth-Century MusicThe Web Library of Seventeenth-Century Music is a service offered by the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, making available a growing catalog of music in modern editions for scholars, performers, and students.
- Choral Public Domain LibraryThe Choral Public Domain Library, or ChoralWiki, offers free choral/vocal scores, texts, translations, and other useful information.
- Library of Congress: Music Treasures ConsortiumThe Music Treasures Consortium provides online access to the world's most valued music manuscripts and print materials, held at the most renowned music archives, in order to further research and scholarship. Researchers can search or browse materials, access metadata about each item, and view digital images of the treasure via each custodial archive's Web site.
- Harvard Loeb Music Library's Digital Scores and LibrettiThe Loeb Music Library digitizes scores and libretti selected for their rare or unique natures and their popularity as objects of research and teaching.
- Gutenberg: Music BookshelfProject Gutenberg volunteers have been engaging in digitizing domain sheet music, using a variety of techniques, to enable study and performance.
- Digital Image Archive of Medieval MusicA portal to worldwide collections of medieval polyphonic music manuscripts.
- KernScoresA library of virtual musical scores in the Humdrum **kern data format.
- MuseDataAn electronic library of classical music scores.
- MusOpenRecordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions.
- Mutopia ProjectSheet music editions of classical music for free download.
- Classical Scores LibraryClassical Scores Library is a reliable and authoritative destination for in-copyright digital scores of the classical canon, as well as a resource for the discovery of diverse and lesser-known contemporary works.
Online Sound Recordings and Videos
- British Library - Archival Sound Recordings
Archival Sound Recordings is the result of a development project to increase access to the British Library Sound Archive's extensive collections. - CHARM
The traditional musicological approach is to see music as a written text reproduced in performance. But much music does not exist in the form of a written text, circulating purely in the form of recordings. And even when music does exist as a written text, performers play an essential role in creating the experience that, for most people, is the music. CHARM was established to promote a musicology that better reflects the nature of music as experiences in the twentieth century and beyond. - National Jukebox: Historical Recordings from the Library
The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives. - internet Archive: live Music (Free - Open Source)
Provides high quality live concerts in a downloadable format. The Internet Archive has teamed up with etree.org to preserve and archive as many live concerts as possible for current and future listeners.
