Classical sheet music

The music is free; the edition may not be

Copyright expires on the composition. It does not expire on somebody's edition of that composition, which is a new work in its own right — the fingering, the editorial slurs, the ornament realisations and the engraving all belong to whoever made them.

So a Beethoven sonata is free, and the 2019 urtext of it is not. Both statements are true at once, and understanding that is most of what separates a satisfying purchase from a frustrating one.

Urtext, performance edition, and old scans

An urtext presents what the composer wrote, with editorial additions marked as such, and leaves the interpretation to you. A performance edition supplies fingering, phrasing and often ornament realisations — a considered reading, made by somebody who plays the instrument.

What free archives mostly hold is neither: they hold nineteenth- and early twentieth-century performance editions, whose editors marked up the text heavily according to a style of playing that has since been thoroughly revised. Those scans are entirely usable for reading, learning a piece you already know, or deciding whether you want it. For something you will spend a year on, a modern edition is worth the money.

Where to start, by instrument

For piano: Bach's Notebook for Anna Magdalena, Schumann's Album für die Jugend, Clementi's Op. 36 sonatinas, Grieg's Lyric Pieces. For violin: the Suzuki sequence or Wohlfahrt studies alongside easy Baroque sonatas. For voice: the standard 24 Italian songs and arias, published in high, medium and low keys.

The advice everyone gives and few follow: buy the edition your teacher uses. Page numbers, bar numbers and fingering all match, and lessons stop being spent finding the place.