Music

Boosey & Hawkes Online Scores allows you to view selected works from the B&H catalogue in an online display. The service requires free registration.

CANTUS is a database of Latin ecclesiastical chant, the earliest written musical repertory of any significant size. The texts are almost all in Latin, and the majority of them are drawn from the Bible, very often from the book of Psalms.

The Bach Archiv's Library in Leipzig provides access to online music, manuscripts, and catalogs of Johann Sebastian Bach and other composers in the Bach family.

The Contemporary Music Score Collection is published by the UCLA Music Library. The collection includes the digital, open access scores from the Contemporary Score Edition series, the first open access edition of new music published by a library, and scores from the Kaleidoscope 2020 Call for Scores, an open access collaboration with the UCLA Music Library. The Contemporary Score Edition is made possible because of the Hugo Davise Fund for Contemporary Music.

Consortium site with links to digital sheet music collections--mostly historic American songs--from seven different libraries or institutions.

Access to more than 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 Bodleian Library has unparalleled holdings of over 30,000 ballads in several major collections. Broadside ballads are important source material for popular literary history, music history, social history, art history, and printing history.

This particular digital sheet music collection pays tribute to Sheldon Harris' work, and it was created by The University of Mississippi Department of Archives and Special Collections. Visitors can browse the sheet music at their leisure, and the holdings are particularly strong in the blues and early minstrel numbers.

Harvard College Library's extensive list of links to archival collections; online scores and sound recordings; article indexes, discographies and bibliographies; scholarly societies; musical reference works; and a miscellany of useful websites.

Specializes in choral music and has over 10,000 different works; in addition to scores, includes lyrics, translations, and information about composers. Most scores are available as downloadable PDF files

2021 pieces of music – free to download, modify, print, copy, distribute, perform, and record – all in the Public Domain or under Creative Commons licenses, in PDF, MIDI, and editable LilyPond file formats

Almost 15,000 free sheet music scores available for download as PDF files; search by instruments, composers, etc. While most of the sheet music on the site is classical and in public domain, some contemporary composers have added their own music to this site for sharing.

Selected sheet music published during the 19th and 20th century in the following genres: Ragtime, Blues, Movie tunes, Foxtrots, Popular music, Minstrel music, Show tunes, Irving Berlin, War songs, and Specialty.
A large portion of these pieces are in the public domain (not copyrighted) and are available for download directly from the site.

A Library of Congress collection of American popular, sacred, and secular music.

Library of Congress digital collection of ragtime songs.

Brown University's digital collection of music ranging from antebellum blackface minstrelsy to the abolitionists movement. This collection provides "a window into the daily concerns, preoccupations, and pastimes of Americans in the 19th and early 20th centuries."

UC Berkeley's digital collection of sheet music published in California from 1852 to 1900.

UCLA's digital collection of popular American music.