Music Research Guide: Suggested Music Databases and Websites

A virtual library of some 2,700 pieces of sheet music published in California between 1852 and 1900. Contains programs, songsheets, advertisements, and photographs.

Contains approximately 1,000 items consisting of about 5,000 images dating from 1899 to 1981, selected from Aaron Copland's music sketches, correspondence, writings, and photographs.

This digital collection has been selected from the Sheet Music Collection at the John Hay Library at Brown University and currently consists of around 250,000 items available for use.

Contains 4291 song sheets. Included among these American songs are ninety-seven British song sheets from Dublin and London. The collection spans the period from the turn of the nineteenth century to the 1880s, although a majority of the song sheets were published during the height of the craze, from the 1850s to the 1870s. Held by the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress.

The seventy-six works presented here are limited to a period beginning shortly after the Civil War and ending at 1922.

Provides fulltext access to sacred music published in the United States, with a focus on publications from the Midwest. Dating from the 19th and early 20th centuries, these are primarily collections of hymns and anthems, with other types of sacred music, such as cantatas and revival songs, also represented.

Handwritten music manuscripts by common Americans contain primary and direct evidence of their musical preferences during a particular time and in a particular place.

Contains critical editions of seventeenth-century Italian madrigals and arias, together with introductions to the editions in Italian, German and English, and translations of the texts into English and German.

Contains handwritten and printed sources important for the compositional process have come down to us for almost all of Schönberg’s works, from the initial musical sketches and drafts to fair copies and engraver’s copies, as well as corrected early editions.

Dedicated to early instrumental music.

Contains over a thousand titles showcasing music from and about Washington State and the Pacific Northwest.

Provides complete, high-resolution scans of compositions (including 90 per cent of J.S. Bach’s works), a database of handwritten sources containing compositions by the Bach family, and various catalogues of works by the Bach family

Includes a wide range of Ballets Russes objects, including photographs, scrapbooks, writings, costume and set designs, choreographic notes, music scores, diaries, and programs.

Brings together musical scores, recordings, photographs, and essays documenting brass band music from the Civil War Era.

Features 147 items of sheet music that reference baseball from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century.

Contain unique music manuscripts, first editions, letters and pictures from the museum's and library's collections of the Beethoven-Haus consisting of 6,100 documents on 37,600 coloured scans of high quality, 1,600 audio files (music examples, audio letters) and 7,600 text files.

41,000 digital items including photographs, first and early prints of works by Johannes Brahms, playbills and folders
Brahms car Grafe, Stitch and Brahms letters and numerous first editions Brahms dedicated works and personal documents, musicians manuscripts from Brahms environment, first and early prints of the works of Robert Schumann, part of the estate of Theodor Kirchner, a friend of Brahms.

Contains primary sources for Handel’s Messiah, Mozart's musical diary, and William Byrd’s keyboard music

Hosted by the Library of Congress, The collection of notable dancer, choreographer and teacher Bronislava Nijinska (1891-1972) contains a diverse variety of materials documenting dance and the arts in the twentieth century. Available here are over 200 collection items, including manuscripts, books, diaries, choreographic notebooks, correspondence, moving image materials, music scores, photographs, posters, programs, set and costume designs, and scrapbooks.

Contains complete digital copies of manuscripts, first editions and the old complete edition of Anton Bruckner music.

Consists of a selection of print and manuscript scores, libretti, mise en scène, programs, scene designs and other archival documents. The materials date from the 17th through the 20th centuries. Its strengths include scores and performance materials from the French and Italian repertories dating from the late 18th and 19th centuries.

contain key works from various periods of music history. The oldest works date back to medieval times; the library holds medieval liturgical manuscripts that form key resources for research into English plainsong as well as sixth century treatises on music. One of the most important collections of manuscript music in the Library is the group of nine lute manuscripts copied by Mathew Holmes in the early years of the seventeenth century.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works is an editorial and publishing project which makes available a critical edition of the composer’s works.It contains all authentic works by C.P.E. Bach that are known to survive, as well as selected works of uncertain authenticity

Contains list of extant Beethoven musical sources including sketches, autographs, late autographs, fair copies, and first editions. It will eventually contain digitized files of the papers and library of Lewis Lockwood.

Consists of digitized images of all scores in the University of Chicago Library's Chopin collection. Users can search or browse Chopin Early Editions via a variety of data points, including titles, genres, and plate numbers.

5,500 digital images in the CFEO archive contain the full score of each first impression appears along with commentary on particularly significant textual features.

Consists of over 2500 pieces of Civil War related sheet music culled from the Library of Congress' collections.

Free online access to new, high-quality early music scores produced by today's leading experts.

Provide access to the medieval codices in the Abbey Library of St. Gallen by creating a virtual library.
More information on the project. At the moment, the virtual library contains 594 manuscripts.

Digitized early manuscripts from the Episcopal and Cathedral Library, Köln.

This presentation explores some of the earliest music transcriptions by explorers, missionaries, and scholars in Egypt, highlighting Moftah's efforts to notate, record, and preserve all Coptic Orthodox hymns.

A research collection covering the history of popular music in the United States from 1790 to the present. The collection, fully accessible at the item level through the UCLA Library Orion2 catalog, is one of the largest in the country, numbering almost 450,000 pieces of sheet music, anthologies, and arrangements for band and orchestra. The collection also includes 62,500 recordings on disc, tape, and cylinder.

This significant thematic documentation of Greek music includes more than 330,000 digitized documents of unique cultural value; they are the source for every researcher interested in Greek music. These items can be utilized for the interdisciplinary creation of cultural services, always subject to intellectual property law.

A leading resource for the study of medieval manuscripts. We present images and metadata for thousands of manuscripts on this website.

Scores and libretti in this Virtual Collection include 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.

The Munich Digitization Center (MDZ) handles the digitization and online publication of the cultural heritage preserved by the Bavarian State Library and by other institutions. It provides one of the largest and fastest growing digital collections in Germany, now comprising more than 900,000 titles available online. Access is free of charge!

Includes the digitization of 126 volumes and some 26,000 pages of music, as well as, the critical reports which add an additional 8,500 pages to the total

provides free access to all medieval and a selection of modern manuscripts of Switzerland by means of a virtual library. At the moment, the virtual library contains 1554 manuscripts from 67 different collections.

Early Music Online has digitised over 320 volumes of 16th-century anthologies of printed music, from holdings at the British Library.

Explore 54,110,176 artworks, artifacts, books, videos and sounds from across Europe.

To mark the bicentennial of the birth of composer Felix Mendelssohn on February 3, 2009, the Library of Congress’s Music Division, one of the world’s major repositories of primary source material related to the composer, is making available here on its Web site digital images of selected resources from its holdings.

Includes184 sound recordings, 19 pages of fieldnotes, and 69 musical transcriptions (with descriptive notes on tune histories and musical features) from two collections in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress: Alan Jabbour duplication project.

has digitized materials of the music collected in the Competitions and Missions of Andalusia, Aragon, Balearic Islands, Castile-La Mancha, Castile and León Region, Catalonia, Extremadura, Galicia, Murcia Region, Principality of Asturias and Valencian Community; more materials from these and other regions from the rest of Spain are being incorporated on an ongoing basis.

Five of the approximately sixty (60) holograph music manuscripts of Liszt which are held within the Library's collections appear on its website as complete digital scans.

Consisting of 35 manuscripts, 656 musical pieces, and numerous digitized Chopin material.

Includes access to libretti, scores, images, and audio.

Provides access to digital images for over 3,000 pieces from the collection, published in the United States between 1850 and 1920.

Presents a complete catalog of the entire Carmichael Collection, access to selected digital objects, and supplemental research information, such as genealogy. The Hoagy Carmichael Collection contains sound recordings of Hoagy's music, letters, photographs of him and his family, print and handwritten musical compositions, and more.

Presents the three latest projects of the Sächsische Landesbibliothek Saxon State Library – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden State und University Library Dresden (SLUB) to develop and digitalise their precious collections of musical scores from the section "Music Manuscripts – Old Prints". Please come in and find out more about the projects "Schrank II" (Cabinet II) and "Dresden Opera Archive", which where completed in 2011 and 2015, as well as about the ongoing project "Dresden Court Church and Royal Private Music Collection".

This collection 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.

A search and discovery system for accessing sheet music from the Indiana University Lilly Library, the Indiana State Library, the Indiana State Museum, and the Indiana Historical Society.

IGRA holdings include correspondence, manuscripts, periodicals, photographs, audio recordings in numerous formats, sheet music, printed books, and other materials. Collections documenting the careers of such noted musicians as Andrés Segovia, Reginald Smith Brindle Laurindo Almeida, Vicente Gomez, Neil Anderson, Ronald Purcell and others are included.

A selection of over 2300 harp scores collected by the IHA and hosted by the Internet Archive.

An online peer-reviewed open-access journal, dedicated to providing the worldwide musical audience with free access to high-quality works by contemporary music researchers and composers.

Links to the digital collections of over 70 Italian libraries, archives, and museums.

Contains approximately 50 pieces of sheet music owned by the Lewis Music Library.

browse and search over 5,000 pieces of Irish and Irish American themed sheet music.

The Archive has digitized sound recordings, visual and printed items, and interactive music scores available for free online access.

Provides access to 4,350 items from the Irving Fine Collection @ the library of Congress. Comprising manuscript and printed music, sketchbooks, writings, personal and business correspondence, scrapbooks, programs, clippings, and sound recordings, the collection contains most of the creative work of this colleague

Music contained in the James Edward Myers Sheet Music Collection documents not only what was produced by Midwestern publishers but also offers a compelling cross-section of popular musical practices and tastes across the Midwest during the War.

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.

An online record of John Cage's work and its evolving impact on music and performance. Browse the full archive of work below and examine a collection of manuscript excerpts housed at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center.

Links to over 51,000 digitized musical scores and other items from various collections.

The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music consists of over 29,000 pieces of American popular music.

A digitized 14th-century Llibre Vermell.

Contains song clips, musical transcriptions, and song text transcriptions collected by MacEdward Leach from Atlantic Canada.

A source for links to online Machaut Manuscripts

an online database that provides public access to digitized materials from the collections of the Margaret Herrick Library. Currently, the database contains more than 6,500 items, including correspondence, photographs, early release fliers, full issues of rare periodicals, sheet music, lobby cards and movie star ephemera. The database also includes complete copies of more than 450 Academy publications, dating back to the founding of the organization in 1927.

contains 215 medieval or Renaissance manuscripts that date between the 11th and 17th centuries. This database contains item-level descriptions for each of the manuscripts and enables keyword searching as well as several different ways to browse the collection contents. For an overview of the collection, please consult the finding aid.

Texts of liturgical chant from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries and the texts of polyphonic songs of the fourteenth century can be searched: some 70,000 works in all.

Digitized contents of 157 volumes, was compiled and edited by Julius Rietz (1812-1877), a musician who was Bartholdy's friend, and published by the publishing house Breitkopf & Härtel.

Digitized Scottish songs and music from the 18th and 19th century.

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.

contains manuscript musical scores dating from the 17th through 19th centuries. The majority of the collection is comprised of 17th and 18th century operas, opera excerpts, and other vocal music.

provide access to digitized versions of more than 600 music manuscripts containing works by J. S. Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Fauré, Haydn, Liszt, Mahler, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Puccini, Schubert, and Schumann, among many others.

theatre and operetta scores from the Music and Performing Arts Library Special Collections at the University of Illinois Music Library, hosted by the Internet Archive

digitized copies of the manuscripts of Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Munich composer.

offers the 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.

Over 700,000 digitized images from the New York Public Library including musical scores.

provides digital images of the manuscripts and first editions of select works by the Polish composer Fryderyk Chopin.

Curated by a community of music scholars, students, teachers and librarians, the Open Music Library
brings together peer-reviewed journal articles, books and over 200,000 music scores from the world’s digital collections.

Presents over 1,300 items with a over 4,000 images and a date range of 1824-1931. It includes the complete collection of Stern's contemporary newspapers, Lincoln's law papers, sheet music, broadsides, prints, cartoons, maps, drawings, letters, campaign tickets, and other ephemeral items.

Includes nearly 1,000 works of music for guitar in print, together with hand written examples from the 19th century, including some original manuscripts by JK Mertz.

About forty collections of string quartets in parts dating from about 1770-1840 digitized.

Incorporates images of all of Poe's manuscripts and letters at the Ransom Center (linked to transcriptions by the Poe Society of Baltimore) with a selection of related archival materials, two books by Poe annotated by the author, sheet music based on his poems, and portraits from the Ransom Center collections.

Search, browse, and analyze complete scores of polyphonic music, ca. 1420 - ca. 1520.

An extraordinary collection of 140 priceless autograph manuscripts, sketches, engravers proofs and first editions.

Music collections including archives, sound recordings and musical scores depicting Ashkenazi and Sefardi traditions and the tradition of Cochin, India. Includes liturgical works, folk music, and more.

It is dedicated to sixteen sets of books expertly crafted by the Parisian printer Nicolas Du Chemin between 1549 and 1568. Here readers will find facsimiles of all sixteen sets of books, plus modern transcriptions, scholarly commentaries, and tools for research. There are also links to related projects sponsored by the CESR, including a broader database of the sixteenth-century chanson repertory, a project devoted to the reconstruction of pieces with missing voice parts, and another devoted to the study and editing of the literary texts of the chansons themselves.

provides access to some of the unique materials found in the Special Collections Department of Mills Music Library, including the Wisconsin Music Archives. Among these online collections you will find thousands of pieces of published sheet music from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, page-by-page access to one of the most important sources of Civil War era band music, discographies of our holdings of recordings by two important Wisconsin recording companies, and an online repository of the Wisconsin ethnic heritage materials collected by Helene Stratman-Thomas.

contains approximately 3,500 items documenting the history of Western music from the medieval period through the modern era

Provides access to the world's most valued music manuscripts and print materials, held at the most renowned music archives, in order to further research and scholarship.

the orchestra's archive of material digitized, including scores, programs, images, film, AV material and ephemera.

this presentation features a wide variety of materials, including manuscripts, scores, scripts, photographs, sound recordings and video clips from the Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine Collection. Kaye, a multi-faceted entertainer, worked his way from performing at summer resorts to starring in feature films and conducting major symphony orchestras

Elliott Carter (1908-2012) was one of the most innovative American composers of the twentieth century. An extensive collection of his holograph scores and sketches are available in the Library of Congress, and a portion of these sketches have been made available online for researchers. These sketches trace the composer's journey of discovery during the most defining part of his career: 1932-1971.

Over 6000 digitizations from the 7 Trent codices including 1800 catalog entries and audio files.

Hosted by the internet archive, contains musical theatre and operetta scores from the Music and Performing Arts Library Special Collections.

A variety of over 5000 works from the Netherlands Radio Music Library with works by Dutch composers including but not limited to choral, chamber, and popular music.

IMSLP currently has 109,102 works, 359,549 scores, 41,077 recordings, 14,315 composers, and 376 performers.

The Yiddish language sheet music in this digital collection is part of the large Sheet Music Collection at the John Hay Library. The digital collection is composed of public domain (pre-1923) titles; when the project is completed it is expected that it will be comprised of approximately 700 titles. This core collection has been added to by purchase and gift since that time, and the entire Yiddish sheet music collection now totals approximately 2000 items.

From 1914 through 1920 the Library of Congress acquired over 14,000 pieces of sheet music relating to what ultimately became known as the First World War, with the greatest number coming from the years of the United States' active involvement (1917-1918) and the immediate postwar period.

The Web Library of Seventeenth-Century Music is a service offered by the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, making available a growing catalogue of music in modern editions for scholars, performers, and students.

The UNT Music Library's Virtual Music Rare Book Room is 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, due in large part to the influence of musicologist Lloyd Hibberd on the development of the collection. In addition to holdings from the UNT Music Library, the Music Virtual Rare Book Room also contains some items that have been borrowed from private collectors and scanned with permission.

A portal to collections of digitized scores and more.

Links to online scores from operas, choral, orchestral, and other musical forms.

The University of Colorado at Boulder Music Library has a large sheet music collection with approximately 150,000 items including examples from the late 18th through the 20th centuries.

American Memory provides free and open access through the Internet to written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience.