International Music Score Library Project

Prior to going on winter break I was looking around for music on the internet. Specifically, I needed to find Antonin Dvorak's 8th Symphony for a project I was working on for the Delaware All-State Orchestra. I knew that you can find just almost all public domain classical music on the internet in at least a MIDI file format, but I was going to see if I could find the real score in PDF format. I did some googling and discovered the International Music Score Library Project. It is a FANTASTIC site, and shows how a wiki setup can be used from something other than an actual encyclopedia of knowledge.

http://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page

The biggest drawback of a site like this is that it is really limited to public domain works. That's fine for people who love music from the Baroque period, but I'm more a late-romantic to 20th century music kinda guy. There are a lot of composers I'll be waiting another 20-30 years on before they can be legally posted to the internet. But at least I can find one thing I'm looking for.

One of my favorite all time composers is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. That's a pretty easy composer to have as a favorite; not too many people would challenge me on that one. I'd like to do an arrangement of the overture to the Marriage of Figaro (La Nozze di Figaro). It's just a very exciting and fun piece. Now, whether or not I'll ever be able to get students at Glasgow High School to play the arrangement is another story, but I'd still like to take the time to do a real nice, faithful arrangement for winds and percussion. Now with IMSLP, I can do that pretty easily.

All I have to do is search the IMSLP for Marriage of Figaro and I can download the overture as a PDF file. From that I can imput everything, note by note, into Finale, but that would be tedious. There are programs out there where you can scan music in from either a score or from a PDF version of the score and that will create a file for Sibelius or Finale to read with everything in it. Now, it's not perfect but that would save me a lot of time that I would be able to spend on Orchestrations instead. The program is available, but I just don't have the money to shell out for something like that right now when there are more pressing needs for school. It would be cool, though, and I would love to have the Marriage of Figaro in my portfolio. Plus, there is something about channelling Mozart that could miraculous turn me into a phenominal composer over night!