Research Guides: Music: Scores and Sheet Music

Finding Music Scores

To access the library's physical collection of printed music scores, use the Library's Catalog.

In library catalogs, pieces of music are given added, preferred titles, so that one search finds every version of a piece. Preferred titles (aka uniform titles) are especially useful because pieces could have:

titles in multiple languages (Brandenburg Concertos vs. Brandenburgische Konzerte);
form titles and numbers (Sonata no. 3);
well-known but unofficial descriptive titles (Moonlight Sonata);
collective titles (Songs; Works).

This tutorial from the Indiana University Music Library is a good introduction to preferred titles for music.

RISM Series A/II: Music Manuscripts after 1600 This link opens in a new window
RISM Series A/II: Music Manuscripts after 1600, published by the Répertoire International des Sources Musicale (International Inventory of Musical Sources), is an annotated index of music manuscripts held in libraries, archives, monasteries, schools and private collections around the world. Other publications of the RISM project are in book form and may be found in the Music Reference section on the 7th floor of Bobst Library, call number ML113.I67.
Digital Resources for Musicology This link opens in a new window
Digital Resources for Musicology (DRM) provides links to a variety of substantial open-access projects of interest to musicians and musicologists.

Digital Score Collections

Music Online: Classical Scores Library This link opens in a new window
Classical Scores Library is a growing collection of downloadable scores, by composers from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century and all eras in between.

Contemporary Music Score Collection
The Contemporary Music Score Collection is published by the UCLA Music Library. The collection of over 6,000 scores includes digital, open access scores published by the library from international composers.
IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project) Petrucci Music Library
The Petrucci Music Library is an open-source digital repository containing tens of thousands of downloadable music scores.

Index to Printed Music This link opens in a new window
Index to Printed Music is a search tool for locating individual pieces of published classical music within the contents of anthologies or collected editions.

The Music Treasures Consortium
Digitized music manuscripts and prints (16th-20th centuries) from the Library of Congress, British Library, Bavarian State Library, New York Public Library, The Morgan, The Newberry, the Beethoven-Haus Bonn, Harvard, Juilliard, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, University of Iowa, University of Washington, and Yale.

Sheet Music Online

Sheet Music Consortium
200,000+ pieces of sheet music from the collections of 22 institutions. Sign up for a free account to make your own private or shared portfolios of sheet music from the site.
Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, ca. 1820 to 1860
Over 15,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright at the Library of Congress between 1820 and 1860.
Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, ca. 1870 to 1885
Over 47,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright at the Library of Congress between 1870 and 1885.
Library of Congress: Historic Sheet Music Collection, 1800 to 1922
9000 pieces of music - the majority from 1850-1920 - including both classical and popular songs.