The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Selected Internet Resources > Performing Arts > Music > Sheet Music and Song Sheets Available on the Web

Sheet Music and Song Sheets Available on the Web

Links

• Performing Arts in America, 1875-1923
  http://digital.nypl.org/lpa/nypl/lpa_home4.html
  (The New York Public Library) Searchable database of archival material held by the Performing Arts Library, including "music sheet samples featuring popular music, show-tunes, jazz and dance music". Click "music" or "browse index" to limit search to sheet music.



• NYPL Digital Gallery: Music Division
  http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgdivisionbrowseresult.cfm?trg=1&div_id=pm
  



• Music Scores to Download
  http://plato.acadiau.ca/courses/musi/callon/2273/scores.htm
  "These links include only sites with scores that may be downloaded free of charge."



• 19th Century Sheet Music Digitization Project
  http://www.lib.unc.edu/music/eam.html
  (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) "Approximately 2250 titles...have been indexed; approximately 1200 [of these] have been fully scanned and are available on this site."



• African-American Sheet Music, 1850-1920
  http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/rpbhtml/aasmhome.html
  (Brown University Library) "1,305 pieces of African-American sheet music..., includes many songs from the heyday of antebellum black face minstrelsy in the 1850s and from the abolitionist movement of the same period."



• America Singing: Nineteenth-Century Song Sheets
  http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amsshtml/
  (Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress)



• Band Music from the Civil War Era
  http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwmhtml/cwmhome.html
  (Music Division, Library of Congress)



• Charles H. Templeton Sheet Music Collection
  http://library.msstate.edu/ragtime/
  (Mississippi State University) "A collection of some 22,000 pieces of sheet music from late nineteenth and early twentieth century America."



• Chopin Early Editions
  http://chopin.lib.uchicago.edu/
  Digitized images of the Chopin Early Editions collection at the University of Chicago.



• Choral Public Domain Library (CDPL)
  http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
  "The largest website devoted exclusively to free choral sheet music."



• Fee-based Sheet Music Services
  
  •The Bagaduce Music Lending Library "An international resource center for musical compositions, sheet music, and information."
  •Schubertline "The online score service for singers."
  •Sheet Music Direct "The internet's largest source of legitimate, copyrighted...sheet music..."
  •Sunhawk "First in downloadable, interactive sheet music."
  •Worship Together Christianity-oriented sheet music.



• Free Sheet Music Directory: Free-Scores.com
  http://www.free-scores.com/index_uk.php3
  Index to 1000+ website that contain free sheet music.



• Free Sheetmusic Library
  http://www.bh2000.net/score/
  



• Freesheetmusic.net
  http://www.freesheetmusic.net/
  Index/search engine for free sheet music on the web.



• Historic American Sheet Music
  http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/sheetmusic/
  Digital images of 19th & early 20th century American sheet music at Duke University.



• I Hear America Singing: Music, Theater and Dance Collections from The Library of Congress
  http://www.loc.gov/rr/perform/ihas/ihashome.html
  (Music Division, Library of Congress)



• Inventions of Note Sheet Music Collection
  http://libraries.mit.edu/music/sheetmusic/
  (Lewis Music Library at M.I.T.) "Popular songs and piano compositions that portray technologies (old and new alike) as revealed through song texts and/or cover art."



• The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music at Johns Hopkins University
  http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu
  "Popular American music [from] 1780 to 1960." Includes covers and music for P.D. works, covers only for works still under copyright.



• Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, 1820-1860
  http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/sm2html/
  (Music Division, Library of Congress)



• Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, 1870-1885
  http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/smhtml/smhome.html
  (Music Division, Library of Congress)



• North Texas Music Library Virtual Rare Book Room
  http://www.library.unt.edu/music/special-collections/vrbr/
  "Composed primarily of digitized materials held in the Edna Mae Sandborn Music Rare Book Room. The collection is particularly strong in eighteenth-century French opera."



• Olga. the On-Line Guitar Archive
  http://www.olga.net
  (Chords and lyrics only)



• Popular American Music: Digital Archive
  http://digital.library.ucla.edu/apam/index.html
  (U.C.L.A. Music Library) "The Digital Archive of Popular American Music is an initiative designed to provide access to digital versions of the [archive's] sheet music, and performances of the songs now in the public domain."



• Richard Robinson's Tunebook
  http://www2.redhawk.org:8080/irish/RRTuneBk/tunebook.html
  "A collection of traditional tunes, and new tunes in traditional styles."



• Sheet Music: A Window on 19th-Century California
  http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~mkduggan/neh.html
  "A virtual library of some 2,000 pieces of sheet music published in California between 1852 and 1900."



• Sheet Music Consortium
  http://digital.library.ucla.edu/sheetmusic
  "A group of libraries working toward the goal of building an open collection of digitized sheet music..."



• The University of South Carolina Music Library Sheet Music Collection
  http://sheetmusic.library.sc.edu/
  Access to bibliographic records and (for public domain works) digitized images of "over 10,000 pieces of pieces of classical, popular, and sacred music from the 19th and early 20th centuries".



• Variations Prototype: Online Musical Scores
  http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/variations/scores/
  Includes complete scores for operas, art songs, orchestral/chamber/piano/solo instrumental music literature (Indiana University site)



• We'll Sing to Abe our Song!
  http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/scsmhtml/
  (Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana, Library of Congress) "More than two hundred sheet-music compositions that represent Lincoln and the war as reflected in popular music."



• Werner Icking Music Archive
  http://www.icking-music-archive.org/ByComposer.php
  Free sheet music indexed by composer or editor.



• Werner Icking Music Archive: Other Free Sheet Music Archives
  http://www.icking-music-archive.org/oth_mus_archives.php