Directory of Public Domain Resources

Home > Arts > Music > Resources > Downloadable Music Sheets > Public Domain

Public Domain refers to scores that are now out of copyright and thus may be freely distributed. In the US, this generally means scores published before 1923. In many other countries, copyright expires 50 or 70 years after the death of the author. To know which scores you may legally use, please look up the relevant copyright laws of your country.

Resources in This Category

• Art Song Central

  http://artsongcentral.com/
  Sheet music for singers and voice teachers. An emphasis is placed on standard classical and traditional repertoire. Scanned PDFs, also some MIDI and MP3 files available.

• Breizh Partitions

  http://www.celticscores.com/
  Hundreds of free Celtic scores for bagpipe, fiddle, piano, guitar, flute, and other instruments.

• Cipoo

  http://www.cipoo.net/
  Free archive of electronically typeset editions of public domain choral music, MIDIs and some MP3s.

• International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)

  http://imslp.org/
  A community-built library of public domain sheet music. Extensive collection of original scores scanned to PDF.

• Library of Congress - Music Department

  http://www.loc.gov/performingarts/
  Provides access to various sheet music collections of the library.

• Loeb Music Library at Harvard

  http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/loebmusic/collections/digital.html
  Scanned images of rare and unique musical scores from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

• National Library of Australia Digital Collections - Printed Music

  http://www.nla.gov.au/digicoll/music.html
  Extensive archive of scans of Australian printed music items from the 19th and early 20th centuries. (Click 'print' to get PDF)

• Piano Four Hands

  http://www.quatre-mains.net/
  Classical and traditional sheet music in PDF format for piano four hands.

• Ragtime Sheet Music and Books

  http://www.trachtman.org/ragtime/musicbooks.htm
  A source for ragtime music. Includes some downloadable tunes in GIF format and a links to other ragtime music.

• RowyNet

  http://www.rowy.net/
  Free sheet music, online multilingual music glossary and selected links to classical music scores.

• SheetMusicFox

  http://www.sheetmusicfox.com/
  A large collection of free public domain sheet music.

• Sibley Music Library

  https://urresearch.rochester.edu/viewInstitutionalCollection.action?collectionId=63
  PDFs of scores and books in the public domain. Many of these are unique to the Sibley Music Library collection.

• The Choral Public Domain Library

  http://www.cpdl.org/
  An extensive community-built library of editions of public domain choral music.

• The Danish National Digital Sheet Music Archive

  http://www.kb.dk/en/nb/samling/ma/digmus/index.html
  A collection of scans of printed and manuscript music in PDF. Contains mostly Danish composers.

• The E. Azalia Hackley Collection

  http://www.thehackley.org/
  19th and 20th century sheet music of Negro themes.

• The Indiana State Collection

  http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/inharmony/
  Sheet music by Indiana composers, arrangers, lyricists and publishers.

• The Mutopia Project

  http://www.mutopiaproject.org/
  Public domain sheet music, newly typeset with GNU LilyPond. In addition to the printable PDF, the LilyPond source as well as MIDI files are provided. Mostly classical, with a little jazz.

• Werner Icking Music Archive

  http://icking-music-archive.org/
  A web archive of electronically typeset public domain sheet music in PDF. Primarily early music, but also some contemporary works, including some jazz.

 

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