Classical Scores Library will contain 400,000 pages of the most important classical scores and manuscripts, allowing for the study and analysis of more than 25,000 scores. The current release includes 24,300 scores and 399,098 pages. THE ISU LIBRARY NO LONGER SUBSCRIBES TO THIS RESOURCE BUT YOU MAY FIND IT AVAILABLE IN OTHER LIBRARIES.
Music published before 1923 is now in the public domain (out of copyright). Here are a few sites linking to digitized copies of many of the scores now available.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - The purpose of this web site operated by the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum in cooperation with the Packard Humanities Institute is to make Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's musical compositions widely and conveniently accessible to the public, for personal study and for educational and classroom use.
The Library Catalog is limited in it's ability to search for collected works and in particular full scores. The way catalog entries are developed, the collected work of a composer is often listed, even individual volumes of the collected work, but the scores collected within each volume are not cataloged.
In order to locate Full Scores in collected works, students should access "Historical Sets, Collected Editions and Monments of Music, available at the ISU Cunningham Memorial Library's reference desk.
Historical Sets, Collected Editions and Monuments of Music is often refered to as "The Harriet Heyer" or simply the "Heyer". The 1980 edition is the only Music material located in the Library's Reference Collection. It's accesible via the Library Reference Desk (The "Ask" desk). There are 3 editions of the Heyer: 1957, 1969 and 1980 and all three are located under the Call Number: ML 113. H52
Historical Sets, Collected Editions, and Monuments of Music aims to present a list of all of the complete editions of the music of individual composers and the major collections of music that have been published or as of 1980, were in the process of publication. This includes collections, anthologies, or monumental sets of music considered by the author (Anna Harriet Heyer) to have historical value, musical worth, reliable editing, or signifigance to music research. While other books have been produced since 1980, none are as comprehensive as the Harriet Heyer. The 1980 edition continues to be the heaviest used book in Music Libraries worldwide. Please take care when using the Heyer. It is heavily used and in poor condition. Ask a reference librarian to assist you in looking up information to ensure that it's continued availability.
Library Catalogs are limited tools. When conducting music research, individual works by composers are often difficult to locate via the Library Catalog and in the case of Collected Editions, near impossible. To combat this, Music librarians at Indiana State have kept notes in the 1980 edition of this work. Call Numbers have been penciled in to aid researchers locate volumes and each title owned with editions is checked.
"Historical editions are subdivided here according to content. ‘Collected editions’ refer to those publications that present a complete repertory, either the complete works of a single composer (also known as a ‘complete edition’ or ‘Gesamtausgabe’) or those multi-volume series in which the majority of individual volumes present a unified musical repertory derived from the same or from closely related original sources (also known as ‘Denkmäler’ or ‘monuments’). ‘Anthologies’ refer to historical publications of selections and excerpts from a variety of musical sources; these are subdivided into ‘extended anthologies’ (containing five or more volumes published over a period of five or more years) and ‘small anthologies’."
, et al. "Editions, historical." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. 25 Aug. 2008
Use the works lists in Grove or Heyer to locate individual items in a collected works set.
A.H. Heyer: Historical Sets, Collected Editions, and Monuments of Music: a Guide to their Contents (Chicago, 1957, 3/1980) ML113 H491980 (Reference)
Hill will tell you whether a collected edition exists, but doesn't provide volume contents listings.
To locate individual items in a collected works set using Grove Online, first select the "Works" tab under the entry for the composer.
Collected editions for that composer will be listed at the top of the page. Note the abbreviation in brackets at the end of each listing.
Find the piece you are looking for in the works list. The right-hand columns will tell you where in the composer's collected works you can find that piece.
Collected editions are primarily classified in the M2s and M3s (located on the third floor of the library). Once you become familiar with the section you can scan it to find the set you are looking for, but otherwise you'll need to find the call number for the set you need. You can search the library catalog with the title you find in Grove, Heyer, or Hill, or, you can simply do a keyword search for [composer name] and works. This isn't precise, but will give you something to start with.
