My son Steven suggested that I blog about Musopen, the free online music collection.
Musopen’s Musical Mission
Musopen tells us that it is their mission is to set music free:
Musopen is an online music library of copyright free (public domain) music. We want to give the world access to music without the legal hassles so common today. There is a great deal of music that has expired copyrights, but almost no recordings of this music is in the public domain. We aim to record or obtain recordings that have no copyrights so that our visitors may listen, re-use, or in any way enjoy music. Put simply, our mission is to set music free.
Musopen was founded by Aaron Dunn while attending Skidmore College. The project began as an experiment and has since become one of the most popular public domain music sources on the web. Musopen’s goal is to be the largest online repository of music in the public domain. A good start is the release of the complete recordings of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas, all 32 of them, for free and without any copyrights. There are also many other classical works represented.
A Musical Sampling
Here are a few of my favorites I have downloaded from Musopen:
Johann Sebastian Bach — Minuet — Notebook for Anna Magdalena
Johann Sebastian Bach — Partita No. 3 in E Major, BWV 1006
Ludwig van Beethoven — Sonata No. 14 in C Sharp Minor Moonlight, Op. 27 No. 2
Ludwig van Beethoven — Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67
Ludwig van Beethoven — Symphony No. 6 in F Major ‘Pastoral’, Op. 68
Edvard Grieg — Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 16
Felix Mendelssohn — Symphony No. 4 in A Major ‘Italian’, Op. 90
Sheet Music
Of interest too is the access to public domain sheet music. It is simple to obtain with no strange formats or random wiki text. You can preview before you download or print, and there are live previews of sheet music. There is also available for order public domain sheet music for the cost of printing and shipping.
Bid For Music (no longer available)
Don’t see the music you want, then help bid for it. Here’s how it works. Decide how much you would be willing to pay for a piece of music to be in the public domain (copyright free). Musopen will combine your donation with others who want the same piece then find a professional to record and donate the work. It is then added to the website. A lot of small donations can be combined to contribute a great deal of new music. Musicians have the option to be considered to be paid to record for Musopen.
All the things that you would like to have free are copyrighted and all the things provided free are those that you don’t want :))
Anyway, good for classical music enthusiasts, but those CDs are already very cheap.
One of the advantages of this site is that none of the music is copyrighted. So if I wanted background music for a presentation I could use it. Even cheap classical CDs are copyrighted. Perhaps in the future there will be other kinds of music offered.
Excellent! Thanks so much for blogging about Musopen — I’m always on the lookout for free sheet music sites!
I don’t play an instrument myself but I can see how useful free music sheets would be. It looks like your site has some valuable information also.
Well finding sheet music is difficult nowadays. Most of it is paid. Thanks for letting me know about that site, appreciated.
Fantastic!!! I should say you blog is awesome… Thanks for letting me know about all of this! It’s definitely hard to find music sheets for free, most are paid ones and I really don’t have the money for it..Anyway, keep sharing and looking forward to the next one!!!
The link you posted here to your website (that I have removed) tries to download musicoasis_467.exe. It is not good form to be posting links to an executable without warning the intended recipient.