Skip to main content
LibApps staff login

Music - Online Resources

Online resources that may be used for music performance and research.

Digital Sheet Music Collections (Open Access)

Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads

The Bodleian Library 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.

 

ChoralWiki: The Choral Public Domain Library

Begun in December 1998, the Choral Public Domain Llibrary is one of the world's largest free sheet music sites. You can use CPDL to find scores, texts, translations, and information about composers.

 

Historic American Sheet Music

The Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections 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.

 

IMSLP: Petrucci Music Library

The Petrucci Music Library has a goal to create a virtual library containing all public domain music scores, as well as scores from composers who are willing to share their music with the world without charge. The Petrucci Music Library also encourages the exchange of musical ideas, both in the form of musical works and in their analysis.

 

Inventions of Note Sheet Music Collection

The Inventions of Note Sheet Music Collection was established in 1997 by the Lewis Music Library at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This sheet music collection consists of popular songs and piano compositions that portray technologies (old and new alike) as revealed through song texts and/or cover art.

 

Lester S. Levy Collection

Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music consists of over 29,000 pieces of American popular music. The collection spans the years 1780 to 1980, but its strength is its throrough documentation of nineteenth-century America through popular music.

 

Library and Archives of Canada Collection

The Library and Archives Canada sheet music collection has grown to become the most comprehensive in the country, and includes over 20,000 patriotic and parlour songs, piano pieces, sacred music and novelty numbers, some dating back to the 1700s. Besides the expected Canadian imprints, it includes music by Canadians or about Canada published anywhere in the world. Many of the cover illustrations are of particular interest.

 

Library of Congress American Sheet Music Collection 

Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, 1870-1885 consists of over 47,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the years 1870 to 1885. Included are popular songs, piano music, sacred and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra.

 

The Mutopia Project

The Mutopia Project offers sheet music editions of classical music for free download. These are based on editions in the public domain, and include works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Handel, Mozart, and many others.

 

Sheet Music Consortium

The Sheet Music Consortium is 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).

 

Templeton Digital Sheet Music Collection

The sheet music collection of almost 22,000 pieces includes popular tunes dating as far back as 1865. The special collections are devoted to ragtime, blues, movie tunes, foxtrots, popular music, show tunes, Irving Berlin, and war songs.

 

The ASU Library acknowledges the twenty-three Native Nations that have inhabited this land for centuries. Arizona State University's four campuses are located in the Salt River Valley on ancestral territories of Indigenous peoples, including the Akimel O’odham (Pima) and Pee Posh (Maricopa) Indian Communities, whose care and keeping of these lands allows us to be here today. ASU Library acknowledges the sovereignty of these nations and seeks to foster an environment of success and possibility for Native American students and patrons. We are advocates for the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge systems and research methodologies within contemporary library practice. ASU Library welcomes members of the Akimel O’odham and Pee Posh, and all Native nations to the Library.