InfoGuides: MUSI 662: Introduction to Research in Music: Music Scores Databases

Music Scores Databases

IMSLP Petrucci Music Library This link opens in a new window
Contains high-quality scans of public domain musical scores, both printed and in manuscript, contributed by libraries and collectors worldwide. Includes historically significant imprints as well as compositions and arrangements by contemporary musicians who publish online under Creative Commons agreements.
Music Online: Classical Scores Library, Volume 1 This link opens in a new window
Volume I contains over 400,000 pages of the most important classical music scores, manuscripts, and previously unpublished material, allowing for the study and analysis of more than 25,000 musical scores. With full, study, piano, and vocal scores, this comprehensive collection will enhance the study of music history, performance, appreciation, and theory for a variety of scholars.
Music Online: Classical Scores Library, Volume 2 This link opens in a new window
Volume II is the first online score collection for libraries that's composed mostly of in-copyright classical scores from major composers and editions. When curating the collection, editors targeted individual composers and composer collectives directly to ensure a strong resource for contemporary and previously unpublished works. The comprehensive collection contains full, study, piano, and vocal scores, and will provide valuable source material for teachers and students of music history, performance, appreciation, and theory.
Music Online: Classical Scores Library, Volume 3 This link opens in a new window
Volume III provides additional pages of in-copyright editions from composers worldwide. The collection provides editions from major publishers like Chester Music, Novello & Company, Faber Music, Wilhelm Hansen, Donemus, and others. It provides expanded coverage of great choral works and instrumental scores for brass, woodwind, and other instrument groups.
Music Online: Classical Scores Library, Volume 4 This link opens in a new window
Volume IV focuses on works of the 20th and 21st centuries, providing digital access to some of the most-studied works in classical repertoire and exposure to lesser-known composers. This collection will also grow to cover works by composers from regions not yet well-represented in the series, such as Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East.
LibraryMusicSource.com This link opens in a new window
Access over 300,000 pages of sheet music from over 35,000 works including the entire piano works of Chopin, all the songs of Schubert, all the organ music of J. S. Bach, and all the orchestra parts and scores of Beethoven, and much more.

RISM
RISM contains over 1.4 million records for musical sources: music manuscripts, printed music, libretti, and treatises that are held in music libraries, archives, churches, private collections, and other institutions around the world. The bulk of the manuscripts dates from between the years 1600 and 1850. The focus of printed music is imprints up to 1800. However, you will find both older and newer sources in the catalog.

The RISM Catalog contains all of series A/I, A/II, and B/I. RISM's book publications in series B document groups of sources by topic. Most of the volumes in series B are not in the online catalog but can be consulted in well-stocked research libraries or to an extent online.

Index to Printed Music This link opens in a new window
Digital finding aid for individual pieces of music published in the complete works of composers, in anthologies, and in other scholarly editions. Over 570,000 entries provide a granular level of detail about each piece, including performing forces, language, music incipits, multiple clefs and figured bass.