List of Online Digital Musical Document Libraries
This is a list of online digital musical document libraries. Each source listed below offers access to collections of digitized music documents (typically originating from printed or manuscript musical sources), and containing music notation of some kind, stored as an image file.
| Name | Subject(s) | No. of Items | Description | Provider(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19th-Century American Sheet Music at UNC Chapel Hill Music Library | 19th-century, American | 3500 | The Nineteenth Century American Sheet Music Collection at the UNC-Chapel Hill Music Library includes approximately 3,500 popular vocal and instrumental titles from the 1830s to the end of the century. This site contains catalog descriptions and digital images of the individual pieces in the collection. | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
| 19th-Century California Sheet Music | 19th-century, Californian, colour | 2700 | A virtual library of some 2,700 pieces of sheet music published in California between 1852 and 1900, together with related materials such as a San Francisco publisher's catalog of 1872, programs, songsheets, advertisements, and photographs. Images of every printed page of sheet music from eleven locations have been scanned at 400 dpi, in color where indicated. | University of California, Berkeley |
| African American Sheet Music | 19th-century, 20th-century, African-American, Broadway, colour, lithographs, movie music, popular music, World Wars, Yiddish-American | 250000 | 250,000 items from the John Hay Library at Brown University. The sheet music, primarily vocal music of American imprint, dates from the 18th century to the present day, with the largest concentration of titles in the period 1840–1950. | Brown University |
| ART SONG CENTRAL | downloadable, IPA transcriptions, vocal | 1000 | Printable sheet music for singers and voice teachers. An emphasis is placed on standard classical and traditional repertoire. 1000+ songs references, most downloadable. IPA transcriptions are now available for every German, French, Italian and Latin song in the index. 250+ songs have individual posts which provide additional information about each song. | ART SONG CENTRAL |
| The Ashford Sheet Music Collection | American, Washington | 1000 | The collection contains 1000+ items largely from and about Washington State and the Pacific Northwest. | University of Washington |
| Bach Digital | Johann Sebastian Bach | Bach Digital is a digital library consisting of Johann Sebastian Bach's autograph manuscripts and original parts. Using advanced search options of works or sources, one can find high-resolution scans of the autograph manuscripts, as well as performance parts used by Bach and his copies of works by other composers.
The autograph manuscripts and original sources from the collections of all of the participating partners – the Berlin State Library, the Bach-Archiv Leipzig and the Saxon State Library – Dresden State and University Library – will be digitized by 2011, thereby encompassing 90% of the worldwide remaining manuscripts. Further autograph manuscripts from other collections should be integrated at a later date. Bach Digital is a joint project of the Berlin State Library – Prussian Cultural Heritage, the Saxon State Library-Dresden State and University Library, the Leipzig Bach-Archiv and the Leipzig University Computing Center. Funding is provided by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. |
Berlin State Library - Prussian Cultural Heritage, Saxon State and University Library Dresden, Leipzig Bach-Archiv, Leipzig University Computing Center | |
| Beethoven-Haus Bonn Digital Archives | audio, Beethoven, colour, first editions, letters, pictures | 15300 | By linking more than 6,100 documents on 37,300 coloured scans of high quality, 1,600 audio files (music examples, audio letters) and 7,600 text files, Beethoven's thinking, life and work become tangible and can be experienced in a visual and audible way. | Beethoven-Haus Bonn Digital Archives |
| Biblioteca Digital Hispanica | Spanish, jpeg | Downloadable color images from Biblioteca Nacional de España. | Biblioteca Nacional de España | |
| Biblioteca Nacional Digital Brasil | 19th-century, Brasil, sheet music | The contents of the Brazilian National Digital Library when searching for "Type of document: Partitura." | Brazilian National Digital Library | |
| Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads | Britain, broadside ballads | 30000 | The Bodleian Library at University of Oxford has unparalleled holdings of over 30,000 ballads in several major collections. The original printed materials range from the 16th- to the 20th-Century. The Broadside Ballads project makes the digitised copies of the sheets and ballads available to the research community. | University of Oxford |
| Brahms-Institut | Johannes Brahms | 20000 | Das Brahms-Institut braucht mit derzeit annähernd 20.000 online verfügbaren Digitalisaten den Vergleich mit anderen Institutionen nicht zu scheuen. Die Digitalisate liegen in einer Auflösung von 1.200 dpi (Fotos) bzw. 400 dpi (Autographe, Briefe, Drucke etc.) als RGB-Tifs vor und sind bereits sorgfältig freigestellt, um die graphische Weiterverarbeitung zu erleichtern. Auch in gestalterischer Hinsicht setzt die Präsentation des Archivs neue Maßstäbe. | Brahms-Institut |
| The Cantigas de Santa Maria: Facsimiles | black and white, medieval, monophonic | The Cantigas de Santa Maria medieval-era manuscripts were written during the reign of Alfonso X "El Sabio" (1221–1284) and are one of the largest collections of monophonic (solo) songs from the Middle Ages. The To Codex contains roughly the first 100 cantigas and the E Codex contains all of the Cantigas. The cantigas' famous illuminations may be found in the E Codex with every 10th cantiga. | Greg Lindahl | |
| Catalogue of Digitized Medieval Manuscripts | medieval | Very much a work in progress, the database will initially provide links to hundreds of manuscripts, which we expect quickly to grow to thousands. Basic information about the manuscripts is fully searchable, and users can also browse through the complete contents of the database. | University of California, Los Angeles | |
| Charles H. Templeton Sheet Music Collection | 19th-century, 20th-century, American, blues, foxtrots, Irving Berlin, minstrel songs, movie music, popular music, rags, show tunes, war songs | 5000 | This online sheet music collection from Mississippi State University of over 5,000 pieces includes popular tunes dating as far back as 1865. Items are scanned at 600 dpi and saved as a TIFF files. | Mississippi State University |
| CHASE research project, University of Leeds, UK | 19th- and early 20th-century performing editions of string music | 2000 | This AHRC-funded research project is based at the University of LEeds and Cardiff University. This digital resource is still under construction, but currently holds c.2000 separate music files viewable on-site or as downloads. Most of this music consists of chamber music and concertos for string instruments, edited and annotated by such players as Ferdinand David, Friedrich Grützmacher, Joseph Joachim, etc. | University of Leeds Cardiff University |
| Chopin's First Editions Online | early editions, Frédéric Chopin | An online resource uniting all of the first impressions of Chopin's first editions. | Centre for Computing in the Humanities | |
| Chopin Online Catalog | early editions, Frédéric Chopin | 85 | A collection of scores of early printed editions of music works by the composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849). Its scope is 85 of Chopin’s works published before 1881, of which 74 are works with opus number and 11 are a selection of works without opus number. | University of Chicago Library |
| The Classical String Quartet, 1770–1840 | string quartet | Rare and unusual publications of music for string quartet from Duke University. | Duke University | |
| Codices Electronici Sangallenses (CESG) – Virtual Library | colour, medieval | 383 | 383 manuscripts from the medieval codices in the Abbey library of St. Gallen. Downloadable colour PDF and XML. | Abbey library of St. Gallen |
| The Computerized Mensural Music Editing Project | early music, xml score data | A scholarly initiative to offer free online access to new, high-quality early music scores. Based at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, the major purpose of the enterprise is to produce and maintain an online corpus of electronic editions, in addition to software tools making them accessible to students, scholars, performers, and interested amateurs | The Computerized Mensural Music Editing Project | |
| Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (DIAMM) | colour, manuscripts, medieval, polyphonic | Images of worldwide collections of medieval polyphonic music manuscripts. The music and the manuscripts date from approx 800 to 1550. This website includes detailed information for all the known sources of European polyphonic music (which is almost entirely vocal) and high-quality colour images of some manuscripts. | Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music | |
| Digital Scores from the Collections of the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library | 19th-century, Bach, libretti, Mozart, opera, Schubert | A collection of first and early editions and manuscript copies of music from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by J.S. Bach and Bach family members, Mozart, Schubert and other composers, as well as multiple versions of nineteenth century opera scores, seminal works of musical modernism, and music of the Second Viennese School. | Harvard University | |
| e-codices: Virtual Manuscript Library of Switzerland | early modern manuscripts, medieval | 659 | Medieval and early modern manuscripts from Swiss libraries, including the Abbey Library of St. Gall. The virtual library contains 659 manuscripts from 28 different libraries. | E-codices |
| Early Music Online | early music | This collection holds digitised images of some of the world's oldest surviving volumes of printed music.
Early Music Online is the result of a pilot project in which more than 300 volumes of 16th-century music from the British Library were digitised from microfilm. The project was funded by JISC as part of the Rapid Digitisation programme 2011, and will be formally launched at the end of September 2011. You can preview the digitised music below. The digitised content is copyright © The British Library Board, and is made available for non-commercial use under the JISC Collections Open Education User Licence version 1.0. You may use the digitised content on Early Music Online in any way and for any such purposes that are conducive to education, teaching, learning, private study and/or research as long as you are in compliance with the terms and conditions of the licence. You may not use the content for commercial purposes. |
Royal Holloway University of London | |
| Frances G. Spencer Collection of American Sheet Music | American, popular music | 30000 | 30,000 titles spanning from the late 18th century to the early 20th century. | Baylor University |
| George Frideric Handel | Handel | 50 | Fifty downloadable orchestral scores and sheet music in Acrobat format derived from the Deutschen Händelgesellschaft series edited by F.W. Chrysander, published 1858–1894. | Unknown |
| Ignaz Pleyel Early Editions | chamber music, French, Ignaz Pleyel, keyboard music | 200 | This digital collection from the University of Iowa of over 200 early printed and manuscript scores represents the work of French composer and music publisher, Ignaz Pleyel (1757–1831). It consists primarily of keyboard and chamber music, including arrangements of large orchestral works, published within the composer's lifetime. | University of Iowa |
| IN Harmony: Sheet Music from Indiana | downloadable, open source | 129400 | A search and discovery system for accessing sheet music for 129400+ pieces from the Indiana University Lilly Library, the Indiana State Library, the Indiana State Museum, and the Indiana Historical Society. The IN Harmony open source sheet music cataloging software is available. | Indiana University |
| International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) | 234000 | Online since February 16, 2006 · 58,594 works · 213,940 scores · 20,283 recordings · 7,836 composers · 199 performers
The ultimate goal of the IMSLP is to gather all public domain music scores, in addition to the music scores of all contemporary composers (or their estates) who wish to release them to the public free of charge. |
International Music Score Library Project | |
| Inventions of Note | popular music, technology | 50 | This sheet music collection consists of popular songs and piano compositions (mostly 1890–1920) that portray technologies (old and new alike) as revealed through song texts and/or cover art. The collection contains approximately 50 pieces of sheet music owned by the Lewis Music Library at MIT. | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Jean-Baptiste Lully Collection | 17th-century, 18th-century, French, Jean-Baptiste Lully | The University of North Texas Music Library's Jean-Baptiste Lully Collection includes almost thirty rare seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scores of operas, ballets, and compilations by the seventeenth-century French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully and his sons. | University of North Texas | |
| Juilliard Manuscript Collection | Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart | 138 | 138 autograph manuscripts, sketches, engravers proofs, and first editions. | The Juilliard School |
| KernScores |
classical | Scanned graphical music scores (separated by movement), with manually corrected OMR data:
|
Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities | |
| Laborde Chansonnier | 15th-century, manuscript, mensural, sacred, Octavo | One book of music from Rare Book Room, which contains digitized books of many types.
Laborde Chansonnier – ca. 1470 – Unknown, (author) – France – Library of Congress, Music Division |
Rare Book Room | |
| Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music | 19th-century, American, minstrel music, popular music, war songs | 29000 | 29,000 pieces of American popular music spanning the years 1780 to 1980 from Johns Hopkins University. | Johns Hopkins University |
| Library and Archives Canada: Sheet Music From Canada's Past | Canadian, popular music | 20000 | 20 000+ patriotic and parlour songs, piano pieces, sacred music and novelty numbers published before 1900, from 1900 to 1913 and from 1914 to 1920. Besides the expected Canadian imprints, it includes music by Canadians or about Canada published anywhere in the world. | Library and Archives Canada |
| The Library of Congress: Historic American Sheet Music: 1850–1920 | American | 3042 | 3,042 pieces of sheet music drawn from the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University, which holds an important, representative, and comprehensive collection of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American sheet music. | The Library of Congress |
| The Library of Congress: Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music 1870–1885 | 19th-century, American | 62500 | 62,500 pieces of historical sheet music registered for copyright: more than 15,000 registered during the years 1820–1860 and more than 47,000 registered during the years 1870–1885. Included are popular songs, operatic arias, piano music, sacred and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra. | The Library of Congress |
| The Library of Congress: The Moldenhauer Archives | Western music | 130 | This online presentation includes representative examples of more than 130 items documenting the history of Western music from the medieval period through the modern era including many complete works and, as a special presentation, an electronic version of the book's text, which is intended to replace the printed edition. | The Library of Congress |
| Medieval Music Database | medieval | Four complete manuscripts, a gradual and three antiphonals from La Trobe University Library. | La Trobe University | |
MuseData |
classical | Graphical Scores and originating data
|
Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities | |
| Music Australia – Australia's Music: Online, in Time | Australian music | 11318 | Music made and played by Australians. 11318 scores available online, most published before 1930. Medium-resolution scans. Click 'print' to get pdf. | National Library of Australia |
| Music in the Manuscripts of Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire Médecine of Montpellier | medieval | Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire Médecine of Montpellier | ||
| Music Library Digital Scores Collection | 17-19th century | 45 | The Music Library Digital Scores Collection contains manuscript musical scores dating from the 17th through 19th centuries. The majority of the collection is 17th and 18th century operas, opera excerpts, and other vocal music. | University of Washington |
| Music Manuscripts Online | classical | 900 | Online access to high-quality images and descriptions of music manuscripts owned by The Morgan Library & Museum. | The Morgan Library & Museum |
| Musica Brasilis | Brazilian music | 1000 | Music scores by Brazilian composers. | Musica Brasilis initiative |
| Neue Mozart-Ausgabe: Digitized Version | Mozart | Musical text and the critical commentaries of the entire Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, edited by the Internationale Stiftung Mozart in cooperation with the Mozart cities of Augsburg, Salzburg, and Vienna. A project of the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum and The Packard Humanities Institute. | Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum, Packard Humanities Institute | |
| Open Music Score | classical | Public domain music scores in MusicXML format and provided by the user community. | Open Music Score | |
| Penn in Hand | facsimile, manuscripts | The site offers bibliographic information and digital facsimiles for selected collections of manuscript codices, texts, documents, papers, and leaves held by the University of Pennsylvania's Rare Book & Manuscript Library in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts, as well as those privately owned by Lawrence J. Schoenberg (C53, WG56). | University of Pennsylvania | |
| Project Gutenberg: The Sheet Music Project | scores, sheet music | Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today. | Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation | |
| Raphael Project | Renaissance | colour photos, not downloadable | Raphael Project | |
| Sheet Music Consortium | meta-data harvesting | 120300 | A group of libraries working toward the goal of building an open collection of digitized sheet music using the Open Archives Initiative:Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI:PMH).
Collections Indexed:
|
Sheet Music Consortium |
| Sibley Music Library | 18th-century, French, opera | 8643 | Scores and books in the public domain from the Eastman School of Music at University of Rochester. Many items are unique to the Sibley Music Library collection.
Number of Publications in this collection : 8643 |
University of Rochester |
| Tablature in PDF and PostScript | lute, tab | 75 | Approximately 75 pieces of lute music available in eps, pdf, midi, or tab format. | Wayne Cripps of Dartmouth College |
| Tomas Luis de Victoria | editions, manuscripts, prints, Renaissance, Victoria | Contains prints and editions of Victoria, as well as Morales and a few other Spanish composers. | UNIVERSIDAD DE MÁLAGA | |
| A Traditional Music Library | folk music, sheet music | 60000 | The traditional and folk music here is categorised into various sections such as: Bluegrass, Old-time, Old Country music, Irish, Scottish, Christian music, Gospel, Worship, Hymns, Ira D Sanky, Christmas Music, Celtic, Ballads, Blues, Jazz, Session Tunes, Carter Family, Children's Songs etc. Tablature collections for Guitar & mandolin, Singing lessons, Song writing, Chord Charts for piano, guitar, mandolin & banjo. Downloadable PDF scores to print sheet music and MIDI backing tracks for many of the songs. A complete library of 60000+ pages for musicians, bands, music teachers, music students or plain lovers of Real Music as it used to be. | Rod Smith (musician) |
| Vatican Exhibit Main Hall: Music | Renaissance | 23 | 23 colour jpegs of Renaissance manuscripts. | ibiblio |
| Ville de Laon: Bibliothèque Municipale | Renaissance | Music from the 9th to 15th Centuries. | Ville de Laon: Bibliothèque Municipale | |
| Virtual Music Rare Book Room | 18th-century, French, opera | This collection from the University of North Texas is particularly strong in eighteenth-century French opera. | University of North Texas | |
| The Wiesbaden ("Giant") Codex | Hildegard, manuscript | The Wiesbaden Codex (“Riesencodex“: "giant codex", or “chain codex”), is the most significant legacy of Hildegard of Bingen (1097/8-1179). This is not only because of its great scale (481 fols. long, whilst measuring 46x30 cm, and weighing 15 kg) – very unusual for mediaeval manuscripts – but also because it has become for many “the relic and icon of her spirit” (Embach p. 57) through the centuries. Another reason is the underlying concept, unheard of at the time, of a “definitive edition” of Hildegard’s writings. | Die Landesbibliothek Wiesbaden ist | |
| Werner Icking Music Archive | sheet music | The Sheet Music Archive is part of the Werner Icking Music Archive. It contains ready-to-print sheet music, most in the form of PDF files. A few scores are only available in compressed Postscript format. Merged with IMSLP in July 2012. | Werner Icking Music Archive | |