Research Guides: Music Research Tools: Finding Scores in the Library and Online

Finding Scores in the Library

The Performing Arts Collection at Campbell Library houses about 50,000 scores to help students explore repertoire for their instruments and voice types. For suggestions on how to search the collection for scores and find information about your instrument or ensemble, please see the Instrument and Voice Guides. For help finding individual songs, see the Vocal Music guide.

You can also search in Library Search for scores below:

Online Scores

African American Music Reference (Music Online)
Provides comprehensive coverage of black American musical expression from colonial times to the present, including blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, gospel, and other forms in a wide range of material types. Includes sheet music and lyric sheets.
Contains text and liner notes that offer the first comprehensive coverage of blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, gospel, and other forms of black American musical expression.
Classical Scores Library (Music Online)
This multi-volume resource provides online access to more than one million pages of classical scores on one optimized, easy-to-use interface. Includes:

All major time periods from medieval to contemporary
Diverse genres including choral works, symphonies, operas, and the avant-garde
All major score types: full score, study score, piano score, and vocal score
Major composers’ repertoires in all genres
In-copyright editions from well-known publishers
Classical Scores Library is a series of three volumes and contains the most important classical music scores, manuscripts, and previously unpublished material.
IPA Source
Provides International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions and literal translations of opera arias and art song texts to over 11,000 arias and art songs.
A library of International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions and literal translations of opera arias and art song texts. Aria texts and titles are translated with International Phonetic Alphabet transcriptions in a variety of languages, including French, German, Italian, Latin, Spanish, and English. The goal of IPA Source is to promote the comprehension and accurate pronunciation of foreign language texts in art song, opera, and music.

Contemporary Music Score Collection
Published by the UCLA Music Library in eScholarship, the Contemporary Music Score Collection includes the digital, open access scores from the Contemporary Score Edition series, the first open access edition of new music published by a library, and scores from the Kaleidoscope 2020 Call for Scores, an open access collaboration with the UCLA Music Library.
IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project)
A database 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 (CPDL)
CPDL currently hosts free scores of at least 35600 choral and vocal works by at least 3549 composers. Many of these scores are editions created by volunteer editors.

Music Research Tools

Finding Scores in the Library

Search Music Scores

Online Scores