Finding Sheet Music

This guide provides resources and information to assist with finding sheet music in the STL collection. 

Guide Contents

• Find Music Scores by Title or Composer/artist in the Library Catalog      
• Find Scores using Worldcat    Locate individual pieces with even better accuracy than our own catalog.
• Classical and Jazz Monuments, anthologies, and STL collections you should know
• Full Score? Piano-Vocal arrangement?  How to tell what kind of sheet music you have.
• Some well-known, free online sources
• Ask a Librarian for help

"Sheet Music" can mean many things.  The library doesn't collect a lot of individual "song sheets" of pop songs or piano music, for example.  The individual pieces of music that we have may be found by searching the STL catalog or WorldCat by title or by composer.

 While we have a lot of individual pieces, much of our music is found in anthologies. The library collects a lot of classical, jazz, popular and musical theater works, and some notated world music anthologies.  Almost all of it will be on the Ground Floor of the library, either in the Stacks "M" collection or the Oversize "M" collection.

In this guide, we use the phrase "music scores" to refer to any individual or anthologized piece of notated music, regardless of style or genre.

• Do you have Jazz and Rock lead sheets?  Yes.  Check out our "Real Book" fake books and/or search the catalog by songwriter or title.  
• Do you have choral octavos, or choral music for choirs to use?  STL doesn't have multiple copies of individual pieces.  Most of the choral works we own are found in anthologies.  
• Do you have scores with parts for each instrument to play from?  We have just a handful of scores with parts, mostly located in the chamber music area of the M's.  They are interfiled with the rest of the music collection.  Want to know if the piece has instrumental parts?  When you look in the catalog, look for "SCORE + PARTS" in the description field for that item record.
• I found an arrangement or a miniature score but I need another version, format or the full conductor's score.  What should I do?  If we do not have the version or format you need,  fill out an ILLAD request form for another edition.  Search Worldcat for the score you need, and then complete an ILLIAD form with the information you found in Worldcat.  We're happy to assist you!

• Do you have Musical theater scores?  YES!  Most of our Musical Theater pieces are "musical excerpts", which are most often piano and vocal arrangements of the songs from that show.  We have a handful of full scores, too.  Search the catalog by the show's name, or browse the Oversize M1503 - M1508 section.