ResearchGuides: Musicology: Scores, Sound Recordings, Videos

Sound Recording Collections

(August 2022)

78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
A collection of 78-rpm records, cylinder recordings, and other recordings from the early 20th century.
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These recordings were contributed to the Archive by users through the Open Source Audio collection.
AoB - All of Bach
At the moment, The Netherlands Bach Society has re-recorded almost 300 of the 1,080 works by Johann Sebastian Bach. A new number will be added each week. (July 2020)
Audio Archive: Music, Arts & Culture: 78 RPMs & Cylinder Recordings
Listen to a collection of 78rpm records and cylinder recordings released in the early 20th century. These recordings were contributed to the Archive by users through the Open Source Audio collection. Includes 10,695 items. (February 2017)

British Library Sounds
50,000 recordings and their associated documentation from the British Library’s extensive collections of unique sound recordings which come from all over the world and cover the entire range of recorded sound: music, drama and literature, oral history, wildlife and environmental sounds. more...

Deezer - Listen, Discover, and Take Your Music Anywhere
A web-based music streaming service allowing users to listen to music content from record labels including Emi, Sony, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group on various devices online or offline. Currently has 30 million licensed tracks in its library, over 30,000 radio channels, 16 million monthly active users, and 5 million paid subscribers.
Early Gramophone Records and Phonograph Cylinders On-line Database [Disques et cylindres de la Belle Époque en ligne]
A digitised collection of 12,044 files with 11,311 audio files available, last updated 15 April 2020. (July 2020)
Gallica - bibliothèque numérique: Enregistrements sonores
A collection of 5,075 sound recordings (not only music), digitized by the National Library of France.
The Global Jukebox
A multimedia tool for learning that organizes and maps human expressive behavior with an illustrated geography of song, dance, and speech, based on Alan Lomax's studies.
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Unites sound and film clips, images, text, and a discography and filmography according to Cantometrics, Choreometrics, Parlametrics, and Phonotactics.
Karl Tirén's Phonograph Recordings of Joik
A collections of ca 300 yoiks recorded by Karl Thilén in Lapland, 1913–1915.
Live Music Archive
A collection of highest-quality live concerts in a lossless, downloadable format, preserved by The Internet Archive for current and future generations to enjoy. All music in this Collection is from trade-friendly artists and is strictly non-commercial, both for access here and for any further distribution.
Music at MIT Oral History Collection
On this site you will find in-depth interviews with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) faculty, staff, and former students about their musical experiences at the Institute, as well as their professional careers in music or other fields.
National Jukebox - Historical Recordings from the Library of Congress
Includes recordings from the collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives.

Naxos Music Library
Complete catalogues or selected recordings of over 640 labels such as ARC, Berlin Classics, BIS, Capriccio, Chandos, EMI Classics, Erato, Finlandia, Hänssler Classic, Harmonia Mundi, Hungaroton, Naïve, Naxos, Nonesuch, Nimbus, Ondine, RCA Records, Sony Classical, Teldec, Virgin Classics and Warner Classics. Includes classical, jazz, world, classic rock, and nostalgia music. Use with Helmet library card only. more...

Raita - musiikkia vanhoilta äänilevyiltä
A collection of digitized early Finnish sound recordings.
Stage24
The virtual stage of the Finnish National Opera and Ballet. Here you can watch and listen to performances whenever you like.
UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive
A digital collection of more than 10,000 cylinder recordings.

Score Collections

10th–16th Century Liturgical Chants
A digitized collection of chant manuscripts (antiphonaries, graduals, processionals, etc.) containing music intended for use during the rituals of the Roman Catholic Mass and Divine Office.
The 18th-Century Symphony Archive
A collection of microfilms and photocopies of some 3,600 original scores and parts documenting the history of the genre through its formative years. More than half of the scores (those without copyright restrictions) have been digitized and made available online via links from the catalogue.
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The catalogue is organized by composers’ last names. Collections of works by several composers are listed at the beginning of the catalogue alphabetically by the first composer’s last name. Instrumentation is included using standard abbreviations. Publishers, libraries, and additional information appear as found on the materials.
American Vernacular Music Manuscripts, ca. 1730–1910 - Digital Collections from the American Antiquarian Society and the Center for Popular Music
A database containing more than 10,000 pieces of music.
Bach Digital
A portal offering complete digitised scans of manuscripts, a database listing manuscript sources of works by members of the Bach family, and catalogues of works by members of the Bach family.
BookNavigator: Music - Scores and Sheet Music
Чайковский, открытый мир - электронная база данных рукописного паследия композитора
На настоящем этапе в электронной базе данных представлены сканированные копии автографов музыкальных произведений композитора, хранящихся в фонде Всероссийского музейного объединения музыкальной культуры имени М. И. Глинки (ВМОМК имени М. И. Глинки). В ближайшее время ресурс пополнят документы других типов, как из собрания Музейного объединения, так и иных организаций.
Cambridge Digital Library: Music
A selection of lute manuscripts copied by Mathew Holmes in the early years of the seventeenth century. The collection will expand later to include other kind of music sources, too! (December 2014)
CFEO - Chopin's First Editions Online
An online resource uniting all of the first impressions of Frédéric Chopin's first editions in an unprecedented virtual collection, thereby providing direct access to musicians and musicologists to some of the most important primary source materials relevant to the composer's music.
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The c. 5.500 digital images in the CFEO archive were obtained from five lead institutions (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Bodleian Library, British Library, Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina and the University of Chicago Library) and seventeen other libraries. The full score of each first impression appears along with commentary on particularly significant textual features. In addition, there are excerpts from the Annotated Catalogue of Chopin's First Editions . Innovative methodologies for complex textual interlinking and web delivery of this material were devised at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities (CCH) using advanced imaging techniques allied with relevant open standards for metadata and interface design.
CHASE - Collection of Historical Annotated String Editions
A collection of 19th and early 20th century annotated editions of string music.
Contemporary Music Score Collection
This collection includes 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.
DIAMM - Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music
A leading resource for the study of medieval manuscripts. We present images and metadata for thousands of manuscripts on this website. We also provide a home for scholarly resources and editions, undertake digital restoration of damaged manuscripts and documents, publish high-quality facsimiles, and offer our expertise as consultants.
Digital Archive of Finnish Folk Tunes [Suomen kansan e-sävelmät]
A database of 8,613 Finnish folk tunes and their relevant details (notation, key, meter, place of collection, lyrics, collector and so on), all searchable by keyword, collection, musical type, geographical location and musical content. Includes also maps describing geographical distributions of the songs and other musical details.
The Earliest Finnish Sheet-Music
A digitised collection of Finnish scores and sheet music. At its pilot stage, the collection includes 23 titles by composer Fredrik Pacius (1809–1891) only.
Early American Sheet Music
A collection of 2,492 digitised titles of sheet music printed or copied in the United States of America prior 1820.
Early Music Online
This collection holds more than 300 volumes of 16th-century music from the British Library were digitised from microfilm.
The Fiddle Volumes
Here you can search for titles, performer, place of origin and commentaries in the Fiddle Volumes of Norwegian folk music, a total of 3,365 tunes.
Finlands svenska folkdiktning
A collection of tradtional music from the Swedish-speaking areas of Finland.
Fragmenta membranea
The Fragmenta membranea collection at the National Library of Finland contains the vast majority of the remains of books written and used in the eastern parts of medieval Sweden, the Diocese of Turku. The Fragmenta membranea database contains 9,319 digitized parchment leaves meaning 18,638 pages which come from approximately 1,500 different medieval manuscripts.
Gaetano Brunetti Manuscript Scores
A digitised collection of 53 holograph and 64 copyist manuscripts of mostly chamber and orchestral music composed by Gaetano Brunetti (1744–1798).
Gallica - bibliothèque numérique: Partitions
A collection of 22,833 scores from the 11th century to the 20th century, digitized mostly by the National Library of France.
IDEM - Integrated Database for Early Music
An interdisciplinary, multifaceted database of manuscripts and printed books that are relevant to the Alamire Foundation's research and activities. It therefore especially focuses on the musical heritage of the Low Countries from the early Middle Ages until 1800.

IMSLP - Petrucci Music Library
A collection of 156,00 works in 505,000 scores and 60,000 recordings, by 18,584 composers, and 535 performers. (March 2020)
NMA Online - Neue Mozart-Ausgabe - Digitized Version
The digitized version offers the musical text and the critical commentaries of the entire Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, edited by the Internationale Stiftung Mozart in cooperation with the Mozart cities of Augsburg, Salzburg, and Vienna.
Nuottiarkku
A collection of Finnish folk dance tunes in PDF files, arranged according to key and dance type.
OCVE - Online Chopin Variorum Edition
As a result of the latest research and technical development, the OCVE resource now comprises a broad range of primary source materials for Chopin's Ballades (Opp. 23, 38, 47 and 52), Preludes (Opp. 28 and 45) and Scherzos (Opp. 20, 31, 39 and 54) as well as the Fantasy Op. 49 and Polonaise-Fantasy Op. 61. These materials can be manipulated in a wide variety of ways, allowing new insights to be gained through extraction, comparison, juxtaposition and collation.
Online Sheet Music Library
Welcome to the online sheet music library. You may use the library free of charge, you only need to download the free Scorch-plug in for your browser. This plug-in can be found at the Sibelius notation software website: www.sibelius.com
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The online sheet music library is a part of e-concerthouse virtual library. The online sheet music library is maintained by OUAS library information officer Tiina Tolonen. In the present stage the library is based on the personal collection of lecturer Kari Kuosmanen, which consists of thousands of scores.
Victorian Popular Music
Leaf through illustrated sheet music for 188 songs and piano pieces from the heyday of Victorian Music Hall to discover an entertaining sidelight on Victorian society.

Video Recordings

Elävä arkisto
Elävä arkisto ("Living Archive") is an online service of the Finnish Broadcasting Company, including ca 1,600 hours of videos and ca 1,200 hours sound recordings from ca 21,000 radio and television programs.
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The AV material is accompanied by ca. 12,000 articles of background information.

Naxos Video Library
More than 1,800 full-length videos of live classical music concerts, operas, ballets and documentaries from the world's greatest opera houses, ballet companies, orchestras and artists as well as films featuring movie celebrities are available on demand on Naxos Video Library. Use with Helmet library card only. more...

The Opera Platform

Öppet arkiv (in Swedish)
Här är samlat ett brett utbud av program ur den svenska tv-historien. Vid starten i 2013 hade sajten cirka 200 olika programtitlar, ett stort antal episoder och runt 500 härliga timmar. Det långsiktiga målet för Öppet arkiv är mer än 10 000 timmar.

YouTube

More online video collections listed in Film Research subject guide.