Free (Mostly) Scores on the WebAuthor(s): Martin JenkinsSource: Notes, Second Series, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Dec., 2002), pp. 403-407Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/900633 .

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DIGITAL MEDIA REVIEWS EDITED BY STEPHEN DAVISON

FREE (MOSTLY) SCORES ON THE WEB

Music suitable for printing can be found in many places on the Web, in a wide vari- ety of formats. Some of these formats can be viewed using any Web browser, while others require special plug-in software. Below is a guide to some of the most com- monly found music printing formats on the Web. Each is accompanied by sample sites that employ the format, and that allow music to be printed or downloaded free of charge. Obviously, many more sites exist than can be reviewed here; these were cho- sen both for their content and as examples of each of the formats described. Specifi- cally excluded from this review are histori- cal sheet music collections, several of which were recently reviewed in this column by Vic Cardell (Notes 58, no. 4 [June 2002]: 889-900). The focus here is on sites that provide practical editions, primarily of Western classical music. All sites were ac- cessed 26 August 2002.

Graphic Interchange Format (GIF)

A standard digital image format best suited for line drawings and black-and- white images, GIF files are viewable in any browser and work well for music. A number of standard repertoire works in the public domain have been mounted in GIF format as part of Indiana University's Variations project (www.dlib.indiana.edu/variations/ scores/). This is billed as an experimental project, though the scores page seems to have been stable since 1999. The site is de- signed primarily for online display, utilizing frames, rather than for printing. Copies suitable for score study can be printed, however, although the music is smaller than 8.5" X 11" and the images are a bit fuzzy. The selections are grouped into pages by genre: opera, song, orchestral and choral, chamber music, and piano.

Another site providing music files in GIF format is Musica Viva (www.musicaviva. com/). The site creator, Frank Nordberg, claims to have over eighty-six hundred clas- sical and traditional works available in the "Free Sheet Music Archives" section. As one looks through the instrumental categories, it quickly becomes apparent that there are not that many different pieces, as many of the same titles show up in various transposi- tions and instrumental combinations. Many of the pieces appear to be transcriptions of vocal works, and might make good reper- toire for students. The GIF files appear to have been created directly from notation software, rather than scanned from paper, and print quite clearly at full size. Musica Viva also includes a page of links to over 750 additional sites with free sheet music.

Portable Document Format (PDF)

This document scanning format, familiar to many of us from e-journal sites such as JSTOR or local course reserves, works quite well for music. To view PDF files, users must have the Adobe Acrobat Reader plug- in, which comes bundled with the browser on most new computers, and is available for free if not already installed.

One of the most useful free music sites on the Web is the Choral Public Domain Library (www.cpdl.org/). Begun in 1998 as a collaborative project to make public do- main choral music more widely accessible, the site, maintained Rafael Ornes, now boasts over thirty-three hundred pieces edited by 140 contributors. Works from the Renaissance comprise just about half the li- brary, but music of all periods from me- dieval to early-twentieth century and mod- ern is available. (A category labeled "chant" contains mostly modern harmonizations of chant for liturgical use.) Recent entries on the "Top 10 Download" list included

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NOTES, December 2002

Beethoven's Choral Fantasy, Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus, John Taverner's In Pace, and Follow the Light bx Tim Brace. Most scores are available in PDF format; some are also provided as Sibelius or Finale notation files (discussed below).

DjVu Format

A new plug-in viewer that is quickly rising in popularity is DjVu (pronounced "deja vu"), developed by AT&T and marketed by LizardTech, Inc. According to the DjVu Web site (djvuzone.org/wid/index.html), "For black-and-white pages, DjVu files are typically 10 to 20 times smaller thanJPEG and five times smaller than GIF. DjVu files are also about 3 to 8 times smaller than black-and-white PDF files produced from scanned documents." This reduction in file size is possible because DjVu separates text and line drawings from the background layer, preserving the sharpness of the text while allowing the background to be stored at a lower resolution. DjVu pages also dis- play faster because only the portion of the document in view is immediately decom- pressed. Also, decompression is progres- sive, so the text displays first, followed by steadily improving versions of the back- ground and images. The viewer plug-in, available at djvuzone.org/download.html, comes in a self-installing version for Net- scape and Internet Explorer on Windows or Macintosh that downloads quickly (less than 5 seconds over a T1 line; about 4 min- utes over a 56kbps modem) and does not require a reboot before using. An open- source version is also available for Unix/ Linux platforms and other browsers.

Since DjVu is a relatively new technology, it has not been adopted at many music sites as of this writing. One free site that has elected to provide music in DjVu format is New Hymns for Worship (www.newhymns.org/ nhw/home.nsf), hosted by NetMedia. This site has twenty-five hymns which may be printed for personal or corporate worship. The hymns are also available in PDF for- mat, allowing for a convenient side-by-side comparison of quality between the two for- mats. The DjVu files are noticeably sharper both on screen and when printed. There was little difference in download speed, since most of the hymns occupy only a single page.

A few libraries have begun experiment- ing with making larger works available in DjVu format. The National Library of the Czech Republic has scanned an early edi- tion of a piano sonata by Jan Ladislav Dussek (digit.nkp.cz/audio/ Hudba_l/ score/EN/book.htm). On a larger scale, Indiana University has created a test page comparing PDF and DjVu versions of Mo- zart's Symphony No. 40 (www. dlib.indiana. edu/~aiyengar/scores/). At just over 3 MB, the DjVu file is one tenth the size of the PDF file, and yet the resolution is much clearer both on screen and in print.

Postscript Format

Scores formatted for a PostScript printer or typesetter (denoted by the file extension ".eps") may be viewed and printed on other systems by using free Ghostscript/ GhostView software and the GSView pre- viewer, available at www.cs.wisc.edu/ -ghost/index.htm. This is not a plug-in; rather you must download the PostScript file to your computer, and then run the Ghostscript software to convert the file for output to your printer.

At one time the largest collection of free music in PostScript format was the GMD Music Archive, established by Werner Icking of Denmark. Icking was killed in a cycling accident in early 2001, but the archive he began continues to grow, and is now called the Werner Icking Music Archive (icking- music-archive.sunsite.dk/). The archive in- cludes vocal and instrumental works by over two hundred composers, both well- known and obscure, ranging from the Renaissance to the present. Access is pro- vided only from a list of composers, so it is not possible to search for a particular title or instrument. Most of the pieces are now provided in PDF format, but some PostScript files can still be found in the archive.

Music Notation Software Formats

Most music notation packages are pro- moting exchange of scores via the Web, and some have developed free browser plug-ins for viewing, printing, and listening. Coda Music Technology, makers of Finale, provide the SmartMusic Viewer (www. codamusic.com/coda/fin_viewer.asp). This

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Digital Media Reviews

browser plug-in allows users to view, trans- pose, print, and play Finale files posted on the Web. (As of this writing, SmartMusic Viewer is available for Windows only, though a Macintosh version is in public beta test.) The largest collection of Finale files on the Web is the Finale Showcase (www.codamu- sic.com/coda/fs_home.asp). The Showcase contains almost four thousand files, which may be browsed either by category or by in- strumentation. (Not all the works are free, but many are.) The categories include all the historical style periods, from medieval to contemporary, as well as the full range of popular styles, including jazz, show tunes, film and television music, children's music, gospel, folk music, and even rap and hip- hop. Similarly, the instrumentation cate- gories range from solo instrument through solo with piano and various chamber en- sembles, to large ensembles such as choir, concert band, orchestra, brass band, marching band, as well as pop/rock band. And there are still over four hundred works labeled "other." Works may also be searched using a "quick search" box on the front page, or an advanced search that in- cludes fields for title, composer, category, instrumentation, solo instrument, diffi- culty, description, lyricist, arranger, and engraver.

Sibelius, another major notation software product, has created a browser plug-in called Scorch (www.sibelius.com/products/ scorch/), which allows users to view, play, customize, and print Sibelius format scores on the Web. (As of this writing, the Macintosh version of Scorch is still in public beta testing.) SibeliusMusic.com is a self- publishing site for Sibelius users with over fifty-five hundred works, most for sale but some available free. Like the Finale Showcase, this site has browsable categories, and an advanced search interface with even more detailed search possibilities, includ- ing composer's nationality, the work's dura- tion, whether a work is an arrangement, whether it is available free or for sale, the year composed, and the year published.

A number of other sites are using Scorch to provide scores on the Web. Of particular interest to singers is Schubertline (www. schubertline.co.uk/). Billing itself as "the online score service for singers," this is pri- marily a commercial site but it does include a number of songs that may be printed for

free, and all songs may be viewed and played for free. The for-purchase library in- cludes over eight hundred titles, including a comprehensive collection of Schubert lieder, an extensive selection of other German lieder, French and English songs (Purcell and Arne), and standard Italian and Latin repertoire. A most appealing fea- ture of the Scorch technology for singers is that songs may easily be printed in any key. Many songs may be printed for as little as forty British pence (about sixty cents), or users may subscribe for six months of un- limited printing for £12 (about $17.50).

Another Scorch site is the Anglican Cyber- Hymnal (www.episcopalnet.org/Music/ ACH/index.html). This site, hosted by St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Sedona, Arizona, includes hymns from the 1940 Protestant Episcopal Church USA (PECUSA) Hymnal, although hymns still under copyright have been given new har- monizations or lyrics. The site search en- gine provides access to hymns by first line or tune name, or hymns may be browsed by their liturgical categories.

For the dyed-in-the-wool hacker/ musician, there is the Score music printing system, developed in 1971 by San Andreas Press and still used by many large publish- ers. Score Preview is a DOS shareware pro- gram for screen viewing, MIDI playback, and PostScript printing of Score files, and may be downloaded from ace.acadiau.ca/ score/scorprev/scorprev.htm. The Acadia Early Music Archive edited by Gordon Callon (ace.acadiau.ca/score/archive/ftp.htm) com- prises over sixty works from the Renais- sance and early baroque in critical editions based on primary sources. Almost all of these editions are available in Score and PostScript format.

MusEdit is an inexpensive notation pro- gram from Yowza Software that is particu- larly useful for popular music, guitar tabla- ture, and chord notation formats. A free viewer/printer is available at www.musedit. com/med/Viewer.htm, and scores submit- ted by users can be found in the MusEdit Music Library (www.musedit. com/MusicLib /index.htm).

NoteWorthy Composer is a shareware nota- tion program, available for Windows only. The descriptive copy on the Web site im- plies a focus on popular styles (always refer- ring to "songs"), but sample files include

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NOTES, December 2002

Rossini's II barbiere di Siviglia Overture and the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. A free browser plug-in (available at www. noteworthysoftware.com/composer/plugin. htm) allows viewing, playing, and printing of NoteWorthy Composer scores. Viewing scores using this plug-in is troublesome, be- cause the music continues to the right in one long system, and there appears to be no way to scroll. The music does scroll dy- namically as one plays a file, and system breaks are inserted for printing.

A site making exclusive use of this soft- ware is Cyber Hymnal (www.cyberhymnal. org/). The site has music, lyrics and MIDI files for over thirty-five hymns and gospel songs, and also includes historical informa- tion and portraits. Hymns may be browsed by titles, scriptural allusions, tune names, meter, topics, and people (lyricists and composers).

ASCII Formats

There are a number of software lan- guages that have been developed for repre- senting music using plain ASCII text. Probably the most widely used is abc (www. gre.ac.uk/-c.walshaw/abc/). Developed by Chris Walshaw, a Celtic music enthusiast, abc was designed as a way to render a single line of treble clef music in ASCII format. abc is distinguished from most other machine-readable music languages because the representation of the music is clear enough for a person to play a tune by read- ing from the ASCII file. This also means that creating the files is relatively easy, which helps account for the language's popularity. For those who do not want to play from the ASCII text, there are a num- ber of freeware applications for Windows and Unix which can convert abc files to standard notation. The main abc Web site noted above includes a long list of abc music collections, mostly of Celtic and other folk musics, along with some Renais- sance tune collections. There is also a link to the abc Tune Finder (trillian.mit.edu/-jc/ music/abc/findtune.html), a Web search engine compiled by John Chambers that hunts for tunes in abc format.

The Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities has created MuseData, "An Electronic Library of Classi- cal Music Scores" (www.musedata.org/). The collection currently focuses on music

composed between 1700 and 1825 and in- cludes almost one thousand works by eleven composers. All works are encoded in MuseData format, an ASCII format de- signed to support sound, graphics and analysis applications. For many works, files are also available in three derivative for- mats: Humdrum, developed by David Huron of the Ohio State University, for complex analytical and comparative operations; MIDI1, intended for printing and analysis applications; and MIDI+, optimized for lis- tening and teaching with realization of or- naments and repeats, observation of tempo indications such as accelerando and ritar- dando, and MIDI orchestrations that best approximate the sound of the original work. A few works are also available in PDF format.

The GNU open-source computing proj- ect has spawned LilyPond (lilypond.org/ stable/), a Web page authored by Han-Wen Nienhuys which creates music notation from an ASCII description. LilyPond was de- signed for typesetting classical music, and the output closely resembles well-engraved music. As part of the GNU project, the LilyPond software may be used, redistrib- uted, and even modified almost without re- striction. An effort has been launched to create a musical analogue to Project Guten- berg, called Mutopia (www.mutopiaproject. org/), maintained by Chris Sawer, David Chen, and Erik Sandberg. Presently just over two hundred classical works are avail- able for downloading, printing, or sharing electronically.

Locating Scores on the Web

Finding a specific piece on the Web is still very much a hit-or-miss proposition. Even if a work is available on the Web, if it resides within a database it will probably not be dis- covered by searching a general search en- gine like Google or Yahoo. Users will have more success if they look for repertoire for a given instrument or ensemble, music of a particular time period, or music by a partic- ular composer.

There are sites on the Web that do pro- vide some assistance in hunting for online music. Gordon J. Gallon's page Online Mu- sic Scores (plato.acadiau.ca/courses/musi/ callon/2273/scores.htm) provides an ex- cellent overview of what is available on the Web in various formats, and Midnight Rain

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Productions' The Free Sheet Mu-sic Guide in- cludes a helpful page on how to find sheet music on the internet (www. freesheetmu- sicguide.com/howtofind. htm).

Web Sites Reviewed

AT&T Labs. DjVu Zone: The Technology for Scanned Documents on the Web. http:// djvuzone.org/ (accessed 26 August 2002).

Gallon, Gordon. Acadia Early Mu-sic Archive. http: //ace .acadiau.ca/score/archive/ ftp.htm (accessed 26 August 2002).

Online Music Scores (To Download). http: //plato.acadiau.ca/courses/musi/ callon/2273/scores.htm (accessed 26 August 2002).

Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities. MuseData: An Elec- tronic Library of Classical Music Scores. http://www.musedata.org/ (accessed 26 August 2002).

Chambers, John. JC's abc Tune Finder. http://trillian.mit.edu/ -jc/music/abc/ findtune.html (accessed 26 August 2002).

Coda Music Technology. Finale Showcase. http://www.codamusic.com / coda / fs_home.asp (accessed 26 August 2002). ~

Smart Music Viewerfor Windows. http:// www.codamusic.com/coda/fin viewer. asp (accessed 26 August 2002).

Cyber Hymnal. http://www.cyberhymnal.org (accessed 26 August 2002).

Czech Republic, National Library. Digital Version of Jan Ladislav Dussek, El6gie harmonique sur la mort de son altesse ruyale le Prince Louis Ferdinand de Pruse en forme de sonate pour le piano-forte (Leipzig: Breit- kopf und Hdrtel, after 1806). http://digit. nkp.cz/audio/Hudba-I /score/EN/ book.htm (accessed 26 August 2002).

Ghostscript, Ghostview and Gsview. http:// www.cs.wisc.edu/--ghost/index.htm (ac- cessed 26 August 2002).

Icking, Werner, et al. Werner Icking Music Archive: A Continuation of the GMD Mu-sic Archive. http:/icking-music-archive. sunsite.dk/ (accessed 26 August 2002).

Indiana University. [Test page comparing PDF and DjVu formats of Mozart, Sym- phony No. 40]. http://www.dlib.indiana. edu/-aiyengar/scores/ (accessed 26 August 2002).

VARIA TIONS Prototype: Online Musical Scores. http://www.dlib.indi-

ana .edu/variations/scores/ (accessed 26 August 2002).

Midnight Rain Productions. The Free Sheet Music Guide. http://www.freesheetmu- sicguide.com/howtofind.htm (accessed 26 August 2002).

NetMedia. New Hymns for Worship. bttp://www.newhymns.org/nhw/home. nsf (accessed 26 August 2002).

Nienhuys, Han-Wen. GNU LilyPond. http://lilypond.org/stable/ (accessed 26 August 2002).

Nordberg, Frank. Mu-sica Viva. The Intemnet Center for Free Sheet Music Downloads. http://www.musicaviva.com/ (accessed 26 August 2002).

Noteworthy Software. NoteWorthy Browser Plug%-in. http://www.noteworthysoft- ware. com/composer/plugin. htm (ac- cessed 26 August 2002).

Ornes, Rafael. The Choral Public Domain Library. http://www.cpdl.org/ (accessed 26 August 2002).

St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Sedona, Arizona. Anglican CyberHymnal. http:// www.episcopalnet.org/ Music /ACH/ index.html (accessed 26 August 2002).

San Andreas Press. Score Preview: A Viewver for Score Music Files. http://ace.acadiau.ca! score/scorprev/scorprev.htm (accessed 26 August 2002).

Sawer, Chris, David Chan, and Erik Sandberg. Mutopia. htt'://www. mutopiaproject.org/ (accessed 26 August 2002).

Schubertline: The Online Score Service for Singers. http://www.schubertline.co.uk/ (accessed 26 August 2002).

Sibelius Group. Scorch. http://www.sibelius. com/products/scorch/ (accessed 26 August 2002).

Sibeliu-sMusic. http://SibeliusMusic. com (accessed 26 August 2002).

Walshaw, Chris. The abc Musical Notation Language, http://www.gre.ac.uk/ -c.walshaw/abc/ (accessed 26 August 2002).

Yowza Software. MusEdit Music Library. http://www.musedit.com/MusicLib/ index.htm (accessed 26 August 2002).

MusEdit Viewer. http://www. musedit.com/med/Viewer.htm (ac- cessed 26 August 2002).

MARTIN JENKINS

Wright State University

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