Skip to Main Content

Music: scores

omni

Search Omni @ YUL

Omni is the library's online catalogue and includes records for both the physical and electronic collections. Article citations are drawn from periodical indexes and fulltext databases and interfiled with other resources in the search results so once you have performed your search it is best to begin narrowing down the results by choosing the available facets in the left hand column.

online score collections

Online scores present unique challenges related to format and availability. Many music publishing sites (eg, Schirmer's) offer digital access to scores if they are not restricted by rental agreements or licensing, but the formats are almost always unprintable for standard printers.

York library resources:

  • Classical Scores Library (volumes I and II): licensed access to in-copyright digital scores of the classical canon, as well as a resource for the discovery of diverse and lesser-known contemporary works.
  • IPA Source: library of International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions & literal translations of aria and art song texts.

Open web resources for scores by individual composers:

Other open web resources for scores and sheet music:

IMSLP [Petrucci Music Library]: a collection of public domain music scores, in addition to the music scores of all contemporary composers (or their estates) who wish to release them to the public free of charge.

Choral Public Domain Library: free choral/vocal scores, texts, translations, and other useful information.

Music Treasures Consortium [Library of Congress]: online holdings of the world's most valued music manuscripts and print materials for research and scholarship.

Music Division [Library of Congress]: online digital resource collection, including sheet music, audio, advertisements, images, and more.

Contemporary Music Score Collection [UCLA Music Library]:a collection of digital, open access scores from the Contemporary Score Edition series and scores from the Kaleidoscope 2020 Call for Scores.

Sheet Music Consortium: a group of libraries building an open collection of digitized sheet music.

Mutopia Project: sheet music free to download, modify, print, copy, distribute, perform, and record (all in the Public Domain or under Creative Commons licenses, in PDF, MIDI, and editable LilyPond file formats).

The Jazzomat Research Project [University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar]: a comprehensive and representative database of jazz solo transcription.

Web Library of Seventeenth Century Music:a growing catalogue of open access music in modern, peer-reviewed editions for scholars, performers, and students.

finding print scores

Finding lead sheets in fakebooks

York's Scott Library has many now-legal fakebooks, most of them in the M1366 call number area of the 4th floor stacks. A very useful index to finding specific tunes has been published by Seventh String Software.

Finding classical music compositions in Omni, the library's search platform

Finding hard copies of classical music--or more accurately, western art music/concert music--in Omni can be very tricky because of the the wide use of non-distinctive titles such as "Symphony No. 1" or "String Quartet No. 6." Titles also appear in different languages, depending on a record company's origin or a composers preferred language. Keyword searching provides the most flexible options, but knowing a little bit about how uniform titles work can help. 

There are three types of uniform titles:

  • Distinctive titles or names, such as "The Nutcracker", which uses as uniform title "Shchelkunchik," chosen because it was the original language of the composer.
  • Types of compositions, such as symphonies, string quartets, etudes. These are usually qualified by medium (eg, Septet, woodwinds, horn, strings), serial number (eg, Symphony No. 3), opus number (eg, Op. 10), thematic index number (eg, BWV 988 or K. 550), or key (eg, G-major). These qualifications are best searched through keyword by combining, for example, a number with a medium or a composer's name.
  • Broad medium, such as Vocal music or Piano music, in instances where it is a collection.

For example, to find a recorded version of Beethoven's fifth symphony, you need to consider:

  • that there are recordings with more than one of Beethoven's symphonies (eg, all nine symphonies), so that the uniform title becomes "Symphonies"
  • that symphonies can be spelled in German ("Symphonien") in the title field (this can be remedied by using a truncation symbol, eg, "symphon*")
  • that searching with the number "5" will not guarantee that you get everything since some recordings are catalogued as the complete symphonies.

Remember that when you use the title field in keyword or title searching, you are searching both the actual container (collection, compilation, etc.) title and the uniform title of the work itself.

need help?