Research Guides: Music: Open Access

Open Access Books

Art of Fugue: Bach Fugues for Keyboard, 1715–1750 by Joseph Kerman

Don’t Be Quiet, Start a Riot! Essays on Feminism and Performance by Tiina Rosenberg

Evaluation and Credentialing in Digital Music Communities: Benefits and Challenges for Learning and Assessment by H. Cecilia Suhr

Experimental Affinities in Music by Paulo de Assis

The First Fleet Piano: Volume One and Two by Geoffrey Lancaster

Holy Hip Hop in the City of Angels by Christina Zanfagna

Instruments for New Music: Sound, Technology, and Modernism by Thomas Patteson

The Jazz Republic: Music, Race, and American Culture in Weimar Germany by Jonathan O. Wipplinger

Keys to Play: Music as a Ludic Medium from Apollo to Nintendo by Roger Moseley

Making Light: Haydn, Musical Camp, and the Long Shadow of German Idealism by Raymond Knapp

Middlebrow Modernism: Britten’s Operas and the Great Divide by Christopher Chowrimootoo

Modernizing Composition: Sinhala Song, Poetry, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Sri Lanka by Garrett Field

Mozart's 'La clemenza di Tito': A Reappraisal edited by Magnus Tessing Schneider, Ruth Tatlow

A Musicology of Performance: Theory and Method Based on Bach's Solos for Violin by Dorottya Fabian

My Voice Is My Weapon - Music, Nationalism and the Poetics of Palestinian Resistance by David A. McDonald

New Sounds, New Stories: Narrativity in Contemporary Music by Vincent Meelberg

Noise in and as music edited by Aaron Cassidy, Aaron Einbond

The Origins of Western Notation: Revised and Translated by Neil Moran by Constantin Floros

Queer-Feminist Punk: An Anti-Social History by Maria Katharina Wiedlack

Sea-changes - Melville - Forster - Britten: the story of Billy Budd and its operatic adaptation by Hanna Rochlitz

Simone Verovio: Music printing, intabulations and basso continuo in Rome around 1600 by Augusta Campagne

Sonic Modernities in the Malay World: A History of Popular Music, Social Distinction and Novel Lifestyles (1930s – 2000s) edited by Bart Barendregt

The Sound of Innovation: Stanford and the Computer Music Revolution by Andrew J. Nelson

Sounds in Translation: Intersections of music, technology and society by Amy Chan, Alistair Noble

Steep Slopes: Music and change in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea by Kirsty Gillepsie

Talking and Listening in the Age of Modernity: Essays on the history of sound by Joy Damousi, Desley Deacon

Verdi in Victorian London by Massimo Zicari

We Shall Not Be Moved/No nos moverán: Biography of a Song of Struggle by David Spener

Woodstock Scholarship: An Interdisciplinary Annotated Bibliography by Jeffrey N. Gatten

Open Access

Library of Congress
Searches across and provides access to the more than 300 digital collections created by the Library of Congress. Includes photos, prints, drawings, maps, books, manuscripts, audio recordings, films, notated music, newspapers, and archived websites.
Billboard Magazine 1936 to 2014
Billboard is an American music magazine. It was first published in November of 1894 and is distinguished as being among the oldest trade magazines in the world
Boston TV News Digital Library
An online catalog of news content from Boston Public Library’s WHDH film collection (1960- mid-1970s), Cambridge Community Television (1988 to 1999), Northeast Historic Film’s WCVB film collection (1970-1979), and WGBH-produced The Reporters (1970-1973), Evening Compass (1973-1975) and the Ten O’Clock News.
ChoralWiki
Home of the Choral Public Domain Library
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science.
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
Free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals, covering a range of subjects.
Eastman School of Music - Sibley Music Library > Musical Scores
Scores and books in the public domain. Many of these are unique to the Sibley Music Library collection.

Internet Archive This link opens in a new window
Over 2.5 million full-text books online. Download free books and texts. The Internet Archive Text Archive contains a wide range of fiction, popular books, children's books, historical texts and academic books.

LibriVox
Free public domain audiobooks
Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, ca. 1870 to 1885
Consists of over 47,000 pieces of sheet music registered for copyright during the years 1870 to 1885. Included are popular songs, piano music, sacred and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra.
Mutopia
"The Mutopia Project offers sheet music editions of classical music for free download. These are based on editions in the public domain."
Performance Practice Review
Performance Practice Review (PPR) is a blind, peer-reviewed journal devoted to the study of Western musical performance practices. It is not confined to any historical period. Originally published bi-annually from 1988 to 1997, contributions to Performance Practice Review from 2006 onward will be published exclusively online.
Petrucci Music Library
International Music Score Library project "virtual library containing all public domain music scores as well as scores from composers willing to share their music without charge"

RISM: International Inventory of Musical Sources This link opens in a new window
RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales) contains bibliographic records of music manuscripts written after 1600. The records include information in standard bibliographic categories as well as graphical images of over 638,000 music incipits. These primary sources are manuscripts or printed music, writings on music theory, and libretti. They are housed in libraries, archives, monasteries, schools and private collections.
WGBH Open Vault This link opens in a new window
Open Vault is the home of WGBH Media Library and Archives, providing online access to unique and historically important content produced by the public television and radio station WGBH. The ever-expanding site contains video, audio, images, searchable transcripts, and resource management tools, all of which are available for individual and classroom learning. Visitors can become a "member" (free) of Open Vault: to access records and save findings.