How to locate sheet music for opera, popular songs and classical music. Information on finding music criticism
The Library catalogue is a great place to start your search for individual pieces of music.
For example: if you search the title Music at the court of Henry VIII on the Library catalogue you will find the published score.
If the title is not distinctive, try searching for the name of the composer and the name of the piece. For example:
Bizet Carmen
You can then filter to only show scores, using the menu to the right of the search results.
A catalogue search will also find online scores available in databases the Library subscribes to. See the box to the right for an overview of some music score databases.
Not all music held in the Library will be individually catalogued. The Library holds the complete works of many composers in multi volume publications called collected editions. These publications can include over 100 volumes for a composer. Each item within these publications will not appear in the catalogue.
Collected editions and monuments of music editions are publications of sheet music by notable composers.
These are often multi volume publications representing the complete works of a composer.
Individual pieces of music within these multi volume editions may not, have an entry in the Library catalogue.
Indexes will often need to be used to identify where particular pieces of music are located.
Once you have confirmed which volume you require you will need to identify the composer's complete works on the catalogue. These complete works are not always easy to locate as the titles are often in the language of the composer. So for instance, the title of the complete works of Bach will be in his native language - German. The Bach complete works is titled Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke [music].
Try a search using the composers name and the term collected works. To broaden the search just try works with the composer's name. Remember to filter your search results to only show scores.
For example:
Once you locate this item, you will discover that it has over 100 volumes. Finding a single piece of music in such a large multi volume publication can be difficult. This is where printed and online indexes become useful.
For an online index to complete works see the Oxford Music Online tab.
The best way to locate printed music that is not listed individually in the catalogue is through printed or online indexes.
Historical sets, collected editions, and monuments of music: a guide to their contents (1980) (2 vols.)
New Grove dictionary of music and musicians
Explore this freely accessible online database, which holds tens of thousands of pieces of classical sheet music scanned from out of copyright sources. Scores can be downloaded as PDF. Sometimes downloads can be slow as the files are large, but the range of available scores is very impressive.
Pieces of classical music have a unique identifier known as an opus number.
This identifier uses letters to identify the composer and a number to identify the individual piece of work.
It is most reliably used when scholars have created a definitive catalogue of works.
For example:
J.S. Bach. - Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Opus 565
BWV-Bach Werkverzeichnis=Bach works list no. 565
Mozart's works have a K +number
Haydn's works have an H +number
