|
How to use this site |
| Home | Composers | Full list of music | Special Collections | Using this site | About us | William Wynne Willson | Links |
The aim of this site is to make a collection of classical keyboard sheet music freely available. In case anyone wants help, this page explains how it is meant to work.
The music is listed in a number of ways.
Firstly there is a full list showing all the music in alphabetical order by composers.
Secondly there is a page listing all the composers. This provides links to a single page for each composer, which shows the music by that composer which is available at the moment. Thirdly, some of the music is also listed in special collections such as Music for one hand alone, In Nomines, Duets with one easy part, and so on.
As the collection grows larger it may become useful to have some general search facility: I haven't yet included anything like this.
Once you have found a piece of music you would like to see, clicking on its name should bring the first page of the score up on your screen.
Once you have the score on your screen various possibilities are open to you:
You can print it on A4 sheets with a single click. Note that the appearance of the printed version is far superior (because you are able to use perhaps 400 dpi instead of the 96 dpi available on your screen)
You can hear it "played". The software constructs the sound directly from the score; it pays attention to expression marks, tempo instructions, etc, but inevitably the results lack the subtlety of a human performance. However you can get a basic impression of the music, and in the case of harpsichord pieces (or even more in the case of a piece for "musical clock") the effect is certainly more realistic than piano music (try John Bull's Walsingham for example).
You can also download the file. It will be in "Sibelius" format (.sib). For total flexibility (if you can afford it) buy yourself a copy of SIBELIUS. You then have complete freedom to edit the file, — make corrections and additions, add fingering, re-format the score... If you have an A3 printer you can print your file on A3 paper and fold it into an A4 booklet. Note that SIBELIUS can do the collation for this automatically.
As far as I know none of the music on this site is copyright. It is limited to compositions by musicians who have been dead for more than 70 years (apart from any pieces by myself and our late friend Gary Cairney which we are happy to make freely available). So although it seems a shame that more recent compositions cannot be included, there is still a huge collection of wonderful music which can be made available entirely free, and this site provides some of it.
Thus the only costs to you are in paper and ink. There are however inevitable expenses involved in running the site, and in advertising its existence, and if you would like to offer support a donation would be extremely welcome.
Comments are welcome. Please write to emma@emmadogliani.com.