Music Online: Classical Scores Library  is the largest and most authoritative resource of in-copyright scores to support teaching and research in classical music. This multivolume series contains more than 53,000 titles and 1.3 million printable pages of the most important scores in classical music, ranging from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. More than 4,600 composers are included, from traditionally studied composers such as Mozart and Tchaikovsky to contemporary artists including Kaija Saariaho, Peter Maxwell-Davies, and John Tavener.

Why bring the Music Online: Classical Scores Library to your institution?

• Provide students and faculty with one comprehensive resource of scores. No need to search multiple resources. Users have access to scores from every major genre and time period. Faculty can easily switch from teaching Bartók to Josquin to Mendelssohn, and students can conduct research across many different time periods at once.
• Expose students to new music. While canonical works are valuable, the Music Online: Classical Scores Library also features contemporary composers and lesser-known works. The series serves as a resource for students to expand their repertoires and as an outlet for living composers to expose their music to new audiences.
• Clear shelf space for higher-circulating items. This series condenses the scores that would fill over 200 meters of shelf space into one easily-searchable online database.
• Save time curating contemporary works from individual composers. We’ve developed relationships with contemporary composers so you don’t have to.
• Access quality in-copyright editions from well-known publishers.
• Let patrons find things quickly, through Alexander Street’s thorough and accurate indexing
• Make it easy for distance education students to find the scores they need, even if they are far away from the library.

LibGuide 

See an overview of the database with links to guides, tutorials, and more. Visit the Libguide.

About individual volumes

Music Online: Classical Scores Library, Volume I

The first volume of Music Online: Classical Scores Library includes more than 400,000 pages of the most important classical music scores and manuscripts ever written. Students, faculty, and scholars will find countless works from classical music’s most studied composers, including Bach, Schubert, Mozart, Handel, Beethoven, Liszt, Brahms, Chopin, plus thousands more.

Additional material in Volume I includes 100 scores from the Barry S. Brook Center’s collection of French Opera in the 17th and 18th centuries, providing access to the music and libretti of the early operas during an important period in the development of the genre.

Music Online: Classical Scores Library, Volume II

Music Online: Classical Scores Library, Volume II provides online access to 200,000 pages of scores. In addition to new works from contemporary composers, Volume II includes a range of important composers not represented in the first volume and alternative editions of many of music’s most studied compositions.

Featured composers include Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel, Andrew Schultz, Moya Henderson, Nicholas Vines, Giovanni Sammartini, Michael Haydn, and many others. This volume also includesThe Symphony 1720-1840-- the largest source of 18th century symphonies comprising 550 symphonic works.

Music Online: Classical Scores Library, Volume III

The third volume of Alexander Street’s Music Online: Classical Scores Library brings together 400,000 pages of in-copyright editions from composers worldwide.  The collection provides editions from major publishers like Chester Music, Novello & Company, Faber Music, Wilhelm Hansen, Donemus, and others. It provides expanded coverage of great choral works and instrumental scores for brass, woodwind, and other instrument groups.

Volume III features modern editions of works by Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz, Brahms, Byrd, Gibbons, Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Monteverdi, Mozart, and Purcell, as well as classic works by Elgar, De Falla, Franck, Holst, Joubert, Maxwell-Davies, Musgrave, Saariaho, Sallinen, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, and many more.

Music Online: Classical Scores Library, Volume IV 

This comprehensive collection of scores places particular focus on canonical contemporary composers from the 20th and 21st centuries, and will provide 300,000 pages of scores upon completion. With many scores newly digitized for the academic market, or licensed directly from the composers themselves, music scholars and faculty will find Music Online: Classical Scores Library: Volume IV to be a reliable source for authoritative scores of the classical canon, as well as a resource for the discovery and dissemination of lesser-known contemporary works.

Purchase information

Music Online: Classical Scores Library is a multivolume collection available to libraries via annual subscription or one-time purchase, with pricing scaled to your institution. Volumes I, II, II, and IV are available individually, but the Music Online: Classical Scores Library includes everything and gives you the greatest savings.

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