Skip to Main Content
Research Guides@Tufts

Music: Internet Resources

This is a general music research guide that highlights electronic music resources available at Tufts University, as well as a number of open-access online resources. You can search the library catalog to find additional materials and databases.

Digital Collections

This is a selective list of open-access (free) digital collections containing music scores, iconography, manuscripts, and prints. Some of the databases also have full-text music literature, periodicals, and content from other disciplines and subject areas.

Archives of African American Music and Culture (Indiana University) includes materials covering a range of African American musical idioms and cultural expressions primarily from the post-World War II era.

Beethovenhaus-Haus Bonn provides access to digitized works in Beethoven's catalog as well as sketches and copies. 

Digital Mozart Edition provides world wide access to the complete works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) in digital form via the internet for study and performance purposes. Additional content includes critical edition of letters, documents and libretti.

Digital Public Library of America provides access to millions of materials from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions across the country available to all in a one-stop discovery experience.

Gallica provides access to digital collections from the Bibliothèque national de France.

HathiTrust access full-text public domain and out-of-copyright scores, books, journals, and more, as well as records for publications and materials owned by member libraries. In addition, there is computational access to the entire corpus for scholarly research, and other emerging services based on the combined collection.

IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library is a collection of public-domain sheet music, which in some cases includes early editions and manuscripts.

Library of Congress Digital Collections includes a variety of sheet music and manuscripts from the medieval period to the 20th century.

Musica Brasilis a collection of free sheet-music by Brazilian composers representing various genres and time-periods.

New York Public Library Digital Collections includes music and performing arts content, such as photographs, sheet music, and primary source materials.

OpenScore Lieder is a growing collection of open-access sheet music transcribed from sources on IMSLP. Includes primarily lieder in German, French, and English languages. Scores can be downloaded in multiple formats.

Polona provides access to the digital collections across a number of Polish Libraries, including the National Library of Poland.

Public Domain Information Project includes public domain and royalty music resources.

Public Domain Song Anthology by David Berger and Chuck Israels is a collection of 348 popular songs with modern and traditional harmonization for both study and performance.

Répertoire International d'Iconographie Musicale (RIdIM) facilitates the discovery of music, dance, theatre and opera iconography.

Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM) documents extant musical sources worldwide: manuscripts, printed music editions, writings on music theory, and libretti that are found in libraries, archives, churches, schools, and private collections.

Scores on Demand provides access to perusal scores from a variety of composers and publishers.

Sheet Music Consortium is an open collection that brings together digitized sheet music from a larger group of library collections.

Tufts Digital Library includes digitized scores from Tisch special collections, faculty and student compositions, as well as transcriptions from ethnomusicological research.

Music Theory Resources

This is a selective list of music theory and analysis resources that are available online.

Musical Borrowing and Reworking is a bibliography of books, articles, and theses that describe uses of existing music.

Musikanalyse.de is a musicology specialist database project featuring bibliographies and discographies of musical works of any epoch and genre.

Music Theory Examples by Women is a database of excerpts and complete musical compositions by women composers.

Music Theory Online (Society for Music Theory) is a peer-reviewed open-access electronic journal of research and scholarship in music theory, music analysis, and related disciplines.

Music Theory Pedagogy Online (Gail Boyd de Stwolinski Center for Music Theory Pedagogy at the University of Oklahoma)

Saggi Musicali Italiani is a database for texts on music theory and aesthetics

UT Analysis Index provides access to program notes and descriptions or analyses of musical compositions in books owned by the UT Music Library. The books indexed are located primarily in LC classifications MT90 - MT145. This index does not duplicate the indexing available in Harold Diamond's book, Music Analyses: An Annotated Guide to the Literature, Reference ML128.A7D5 1991.

General Music Resources

All Music Guide explore different musical genres and styles through interviews, articles, podcasts, video, and highlights.

Necrology File, 1991-2018 (Gaylord Music Library, Washington University, St. Louis)

Online Resources for Music Scholars (Harvard University Loeb Music Library)

Public Domain Resources (University of Nevada, Reno Libraries)

Wikipedia (also see WikiProjects focused on specific topical areas, including music) 

Music Copyright & Intellectual Property Resources