Music scores online

The International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP), also now known as the Petrucci Music Library. This is the largest of all PD music download sites.

Scores and some parts for some works by Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Rovetta and Vivaldi.

A large amount of music, primarily 19th-c., with emphasis as you would expect on Danish composers. Flutists will be particularly interested in the collections of Friedrich Kuhlau and Joachim Andersen. They also offer a healthy selection of downloads from the Carl Nielsen Edition.

PD and Creative Commons scores. Will refer you to a commercial source (non-download) if your search otherwise comes up empty.

General download site, but strong in fretted instrument tablatures.

Sketches and manuscripts; emphasis on the 20th century.

Various manuscripts, 18th-20th c.

Digital music in Australia. Use filters on the right side to refine search results.

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.

"Musopen (www.musopen.org) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit focused on improving access and exposure to music by creating free resources and educational materials. We provide recordings, sheet music, and textbooks to the public for free, without copyright restrictions. Put simply, our mission is to set music free."

Classics, choral, salon music, and popular songs. In Dutch, with mostly Dutch content. Must register in order to download.

A huge digitization project whose scores are mirrored at IMSLP.

The Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus (Denmark) had been hosting the site; it merged with IMSLP, but the original web page is still up and useful. Like CPDL, many editions here are user-created, and should be regarded with the same skepticism as Wikipedia (i.e., if possible, check them against a good critical edition.)

Mostly 17th-18th c. opera.

To find scores you need to search "texts" and get scores + books (there isn't a separate category for "scores")

Sheet music subjects include World War I, World War II, and Kansas City imprints covering a variety of musical styles, visual artistry, and thematic subjects.

Music manuscripts and early printed music

One-stop shopping for European libraries. Somewhat like Internet Archive, both in its scope and (non) ease of use.

The largest subset of the “Martorell Collection” includes 253 uniformly-bound volumes comprising well over 1,100 full scores of excerpts predominantly from 18th-century operas. Contributions from close to ninety individual composers are included with Domenico Cimarosa being the most represented (130 works); and, while the majority of selections are by Italian composers, excerpts by Spanish (e.g., Manuel Espinosa de los Monteros), Portuguese (e.g., Marcos Antonio Portugal), and German (e.g., Johann Adolph Hasse) composers are interspersed throughout. Many of the arias found in these 253 volumes are of considerable value since the obscure operas from which they were extracted are otherwise not represented in LC collections.

A Library of Congress collection of more than 16,000 pieces of sheet music published between 1880 and 1922. These songs, specified as “M1508” items in the Library’s classification system, were taken from musicals, revues and operettas primarily of the American and British stage. They are arranged for piano and voice, sometimes simultaneously in arrangements for lower and higher voice. Sheet music was the primary method by which the public learned about the latest songs, only much later supplanted by recordings and radio. Composers and lyricists from the famous to the obscure can be found in this collection, and the songs portray the culture and history of more than 100 years ago in unique and valuable ways

Arthur Paul Schmidt (1846-1921) was a German-born music publisher who pioneered the development and dissemination of American music. The A.P. Schmidt Company Archives documents his firm's publishing activities in Boston, Leipzig and New York, beginning with his tenure, through his successors, and until the firm was absorbed by Summy-Birchard in 1960.

The Archive consists of the original manuscripts from which the music was printed, printed music, personal and corporate correspondence, photographs (primarily composers/arrangers), business records, plate books, publication books, stock and cash books. The online presentation includes only music manuscripts, with available digital items linked directly to the items in the finding aid.

The collection is particularly rich in music manuscripts by women, including works by Florence Newell Barbour, Marion Bauer, Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (identified as Mrs. H.H.A. Beach in the collection), Gena Branscombe, Mable Daniels, Helen Francis Hood, Cora W. Jenkins, Margaret Ruthven Lang, Marion Osgood (composer, violinist, and director of Marion Osgood’s Ladies, the first professional women’s orchestra in the United States), Edna Rosalind Park, Anna Priscilla Risher, Clara Kathleen Rogers, Mary Turner Salter, Mabel Madison Watson, and Mildred Weston, among others.