How to locate sheet music for opera, popular songs and classical music. Information on finding music criticism
Oxford Music Online is an online database including full text drawn from the:
Coverage includes a wide range of musical styles, composers, performers, terminology, and works. Indexes to collected works of classical composers are also included.
Click on the images below to replicate search.
I am looking for Venite sitientes ad aquas, a song by Monteverdi.
When I search our catalogue using keywords monteverdi venite I find this item that includes the song Venite videte but not the song I am after.
If I am in the Library I can then search the song card index. For a well known composer like Monteverdi, though, it is likely that we hold a complete or collected works.
I can go to Oxford Music Online (see box on this page) and in the entry Monteverdi (Biography) I can choose 'Works'.
I find the song with the following reference, Venite sitientes ad aquas, S, S, bc, 1624²; M xvi, 467.
At the top of the 'Works' page I find that the letter 'M' in the citation indicates the source is Claudio Monteverdi: Tutte le opere, ed. G.F. Malipiero (Asolo, 1926–42, 2/1954–68) [M].
I can check the catalogue and find that the Library holds this resource.
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.