Search Composers, Works, sheet music editions, ...

• "When did Obscure-Composer-XXX live?"
• "What did Composer-XXX write for my instrument?"
• "I wish I could play Work-XXX by Composer-YYY. Who edits it, or has edited it?"
• "In which volume of Miscellaneous-Pieces does Short-Piece-XYZ show up?"
• "Who wrote Work-With-The-Title-XYZ, and what is the Opus-BWV-K�chel-Deutsch-Kirkpatrick-Hoboken-number, and am I spelling this title correctly? I am not sure I got this right when they broadcasted it on Channel-1234 yesterday."

Such questions are pretty Frequently Asked Questions in the music newsgroups, and I regularly receive such a question by private e-mail - some people believe I know everything because I have edited free sheet music to download on the Web at the Werner Icking Music Archive.

Most often I find the answers to these questions by browsing the collections of some music libraries with their online public access catalogs (OPAC's). I find these catalogs more valuable than the Web-search engines for these purposes. I have compiled a list of such catalogs, to help you answering your questions.

WWW access

• http://www-sul.stanford.edu/webcat/ is my favorite because its "power search" allows you to combine some composer-title-instrument criteria. Select "Music Library" in the "Search Limits-library" field. Type "score" in the "everything" field to exclude sound recordings from the results.
• http://www.dartmouth.edu/~library
• http://www.kbr.be/
• http://opaline.bnf.fr/ Complete for acquisitions since 1983. The Biblioth�que nationale de France is gra _ du _ al _ ly computerizing its older collections.
• http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/gateway.html Most fruitful links are Library of Congress, and Italian National Library Service in "Other Catalogs".
• http://mediatheque.ircam.fr/catalogue/index-e.html modern repertoire.
• http://www.rism.harvard.edu/rism/DB.html gives access to RISM {autographs}.

TELNET access

• telnet://library.ox.ac.uk/ other large collection, but not with a friendly interface (separating scores from books and recordings is not always possible):
• Smaller collections, but sometimes useful:
  • telnet://mirlyn.telnet.lib.umich.edu/
  • telnet://nyplgate.nypl.org/ (login as leo)
  • telnet://porbase.ibl.pt/
  • telnet://melvyl.ucop.edu/
  • telnet://infogate.ucs.indiana.edu/
  • telnet://illinet.aiss.uiuc.edu/
  • telnet://libris.rice.edu/
  • telnet://hollis.harvard.edu/

Web catalogs of sheet music for sale, with a significant choice

• http://www.jwpepper.com/
• http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/
• http://www.frankmusiccompany.com/
• http://www.sheetmusicservice.com/
• http://www.amazon.com/
• http://www.vandoren.com/sheetmus/FRAMESM.htm if it requires a clarinet or a sax it's there ! (Some pages in French)
• http://www.bibliofind.com/ (used sheet music)
• http://www.paris6musique.com/ (in French).
• http://www.notenbuch.de/ (in German).
• http://www.musik-direkt.com/ (click on English if necessary)

I take this opportunity to thank all these servers for the help they provide. If you know of another useful server about the same topic, please let me know. I will try it out with my favorite obscure composers, and if I am impressed by the server's knowledge I will add it up to my list. Also let me know if either server no longer works. Sometimes webmasters screw up a good server by trying to make it "better-than-good".