Sheet Music

Many sources of online sheet music are listed on this Wikipedia list of Online Digital Musical Document Libraries.

Two commonly-used collections are the Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection via Johns Hopkins University and the Sheet Music Consortium, which "provides tools and services that promote access to and use of online sheet music collections by scholars, students, and the general public."

 

Library and Archives Canada has a digitized collection of Canadian sheet music from before 1918 called "Sheet Music from Canada's Past." Here's how to search it, expanding on LAC's help page:

  1. Go to the advanced search interface for Aurora (the LAC catalogue)
  2. In the first field, enter a keyword. Useful keywords include musical genres and forms (march, waltz, dance, song, sonata), instrumentation (particularly "piano" or "voice"), or common topics (Canada, soldier). The word "music" also does pretty well.
    In the second field, change the Search Index to Keyword and enter ot=coll17. This is the code for the sheet music collection.
    Then, click Search.
  3. When the results appear, find the filter for Format. Select Downloadable Musical Score.
  4. Select an item that interests you. The link to the downloadable content is usually in a section of the record called More Information. There are often several links in this section. They might be labeled "Cover ill." (cover illustration) and "Score"; they might all say "Bibliothè€que et Archives Canada / Library and Archives Canada"; they may be a PDF file name. Any of these types of links is worth trying. Some items also have a blue Access Online button.
  5. If you need help navigating this collection, please contact Katelyn Browne, the liaison librarian for music.

 

 

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