I’ve recently come across the International Music Score Library Project.
IMSLP attempts to create a virtual library containing all public domain musical scores, as well as scores from composers who are willing to share their music with the world without charge.
I’ve browsed their site, and it looks quite comprehensive. They have many works by many popular composers. For example, they appear to have several hundred of Johann Sebastian Bach’s works, and deep coverage of Frederic Chopin’s works. Over 400 composers are indexed.
Most of the files available for download are in PDF format, but the site also talks about the DjVu format, which is supposedly better for scanned documents which contain mostly text and lines. Each piece is listed with much metadata, including user ratings of the scan quality, and piece style and genre. There are also discussion pages for each piece or set of pieces, a-la Wikipedia’s “Talk:” pages (the site is running MediaWiki). However, I was unable to find one that wasn’t blank.
The IMSLP looks like a fantastic resource at first glance. I’ll be turning to it the next time I need to find a piece that I don’t have!
No related posts.
Sadly, this site seems to have gone offline as of mid-October, 2007. It is indeterminate whether it will return!
The IMSLP reopened on June 30, 2008. Yay!