Thursday, January 21st, 2010
Here we are in mid-January, holidays over and presents a thing of the past. Trying to think of some way to brighten up these dark days I came up with an idea: FREE STUFF!
I thought I would start off with freebies for the classical musicians and music lovers, since I am always amazed at the response to my posts on classical music. One problem for us is finding scores, and then the price of them if we do find what we are looking for. You might think that the Internet could help here and you would be right. There is a fantastic repository of classical scores that you can download for FREE. And it’s even LEGAL!
The site is the IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library at http://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page
There are over 50,000 scores there, all organized by composer, period, genre, and nationality. It is simple to find what you want and just as simple to download it in PDF format.
What’s the catch? Well, there is none, except that they only have works that are in the public domain. Note that this site is housed in Canada, so public domain is governed by Canadian copyright law. But it is probably easiest to go to the composer’s page and see if the work is there.
And if you are wondering, Petrucci is supposed to be the first person to print sheet music using movable type, the sheet music version of Gutenberg. An apt name for an idea that Petrucci would likely love.
Enjoy!
Tags: Free Music Scores, IMSLP, Music Library, Petrucci