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LinksOn this page you will find links to other early music fora and websites. Click on the link to visit their website. Are you a member of an Early Music Forum or other Early Music Group? Have you come across a website that you think would interest BMEMF members? If you'd like to see a link here, please contact the Chairman, Sue Russell, by clicking here
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North-West Early Music Forum: nwemf.org
Eastern Early Music Forum: eemf.org.uk
North-Eastern Early Music Forum: neemf.org.uk
Thames Valley Early Music Forum: tvemf.org
Midlands Early Music Forum: memf.org.uk
Southern Early Music Forum: semf.org.uk
National Early Music Association: earlymusic.info
Early Music Forum of Scotland: emfscotland.org.uk
South-West Early Music Forum: swemf.org.uk
The Fellowship of Makers and Researchers of Historical Instruments: http://www.fomrhi.org/
Downloadable music and online catalogues.
· The IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library offers thousands of scans of public domain/copyright-free scores from many periods, plus MP3 recordings. There is also a users' forum and encouragement for composers to submit material.
· The Choral Public Domain Library (CPDL), part of Choral Wiki. The downloadable catalogue contains over 19,700 scores, with a good proportion of classical and pre-classical. There is a page of texts and translations. Readers are welcome to contribute.
· "Laymusic" - Laura Conrad's transcription site, with many freely downloadable pieces published under the imprint Serpent Publications. (At present, the site switches automatically to Serpent’s webpage.) A good supply of renaissance music in exquisite notation, usually without bar lines.
· The Mutopia Project Out-of-copyright editions computer-set by volunteers, freely downloadable as pdf files. Also MIDI files.
· Hans Mons offers a small amount of early music, mainly renaissance, free to download, in nice pdf files.
· Cipoo.net is another public domain choral music site with over 2,700 files and useful links to other sites.
· Ottaviano Petrucci is a collection of free scores containing polyphonic renaissance music, often arranged for harp or keyboard; Gregorian chant in modern notation; bicinia from Obrecht to Mozart; and music "dating from baroque until yesterday" for recorders and keyboard instruments.
· Captain Tobias Hume’s "Musicall Humours" 1605, transcribed for free download.
· Digital facsimiles of a huge amount of lute tablature.
· Steve Hendrick's Music Collection - downloadable scores, mainly renaissance dance and song.
· Alain Naigeon's score collection - pdf files of renaissance pieces. (Also in 'Encore' format, for those who have this software.) Same site leads to his sound recordings of the same pieces.
· http://www.lysator.liu.se/~tuben/scores/ Free sheet music by various 17th and 18th century composers, especially violin material including some rare Swedish, maintained by Johan Tufvesson.
· Wayne Cripps's tablature page - lots of lute music in tablature, from medieval (Dufay) to baroque. Downloadable in high-quality pdf or eps formats.
· Sheet Music Galore A large collection of sheet music for recorder, brass and bagpipe.
· The CMME Project "offers free online access to new, high-quality early music scores produced by today's leading experts", but is highly complex and not user-friendly. You can view transcriptions in several formats, with or without barlines, words, etc. Some scholarly commentary.
· Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads Digitised copies of over 30,000 ballads in several major collections. Intended for research purposes; fees required for performance or reprinting.
Sites devoted to a single instrument family.
· A clavichord page
· A dulcian page
· A recorders page
· A historical flutes page
· A harpsichord page
· A crumhorn page
· Viola da Gamba Society
· Viola da Gamba Society of America
· Société Française de Viole
· Lute Society
· Ultimate Guide to Classical Guitars and Lutes Good links for historical fretted instruments.
· A rebec project - Paul Butler's introduction to the history and construction of the rebec followed by an account of making one. Bibliography.
· The medieval viol - another page by Paul Butler, many images and much discussion of this instrument.
Playable files to download.
These files should play automatically on your computer. Quality varies.
· Virtual Wilbye Consort and Virtual Byrd Choir have madrigals by Wilbye, Ward, etc. and church music by Byrd, Victoria, etc. These are streaming RealAudio files (the sites tell you how to get players if you don't have them), all made by the one person multi-tracking.
· Early and Renaissance Music on Guitar - free MP3s, nicely played by Jon Sayles, who will send you the notation if requested.
Miscellaneous useful web-sites.
· The Early Music Muse, musings on medieval, renaissance and traditional music. Includes, amongst other things, introductions to the medieval, renaissance and baroque periods in music; brief histories of the gittern, guitar, gemshorn, lute, oud and bray harp; the background to Coventry Carol; an entry on how to read medieval square notation with a reconstruction of a medieval song.
· The Early Music Pioneers Archive (TEMPAR) is a blog which explores the lives, work and influence of important but largely forgotten pioneering figures of the early music revival movement
· Cecilia is an on-line guide to music collections in archives, libraries and museums in the UK and Ireland. Put in your town or postcode and you can find your nearest collections. Searchable by composer, date, institution, tradition, etc; covers many kinds of music, Western and non-Western.
· The Silvis Woodshed is intended to help singers learn their pieces. Midi files of a large number of pieces, a good many of early composers. Links to possibly-useful tools near the end of the page.
· Music Workshop Guide lists adult amateur music workshops and summer schools across the world, with an early music and recorder section. Organised by category, by date or by country.
· Music Teachers UK - Many useful resources for music teachers and some for the rest of us, including a free online journal whose well-informed CD reviews include occasional early music, also downloadable manuscript paper templates.
· Early Music magazine, with archives, soundclips, etc.
· Early Music Network – a wide range of information, news, links, CD recordings , videos and more.
· Here of a Sunday Morning (HOASM) is the website for a US early music program that goes out on Sunday mornings; this companion website is the reference section for the program, featuring excellent historical summaries of musical developments over many periods, extremely well organised. You can listen to the current program and some of the earlier programs on-line.
· AncientFM is a commercial-free internet radio presenting medieval and renaissance (not baroque) performances, uninterrupted by any talking. Point your browser at this site, click on WinAmp or iTunes, and it should start playing. Click on playlist to see what's actually playing.
Small publishers and stockists.
· Acadia Early Music Resources - a site run by Acadia University, Canada -- not a commercial publisher, but they produce some facsimiles that you can inspect online.
· Ancient Groove Music: editions of sacred choral music, with "the highest standards of music engraving, academic rigour and performability". Some free sheet music. Also a few books, including what looks a fine reprint of Thomas Morley's Plaine and Easy Introduction, and some essays.
· Artaria Editions specialises in rare Viennese eighteenth-century and early nineteenth repertoire - Beck, Dussek, Hofmann, and Wanhal - and works with Naxos so that you can read the same score the recording artists used.
· Brian Jordan (Access limited) Specialises in early music books and sheet music. Now has released a useful series of consort music, each volume containing several pieces at a very reasonable price.
· Cantiones Press provides "attractive and authoritative editions of Renaissance choral music".
· Cheap Trills publish 'reasonable editions of rare music' for small groups of recorders or viols, a small but interesting list. This is an American site and they don't mention postage costs.
· CD Sheet Music supply CDs containing pdf files of music. Not specifically Early Music but Bach is well represented. Order online, pay postage from the US.
· Chiltern Recorder Consort Series & Musica Domestica: mainly recorder arrangements (some for recorders or viols) in varying numbers of parts, from 2 to 15, covering renaissance, baroque, and 18th-20th century music. Hand written by Alex Ayre. Several pieces from The Triumphs of Oriana. Note Alex Ayre died in 2009. His arrangements can still be bought from Recorder Music Mail.
- Corda Music -- music for classical guitar, for strings and for early instruments
· Edition Baroque is a new small publisher from Bremen. Catalog available in English or German (everything else German-only); mainly baroque music from minor but interesting composers.
· Edition Güntersberg - solo viol music, mainly German, of 17th and 18th centuries: bilingual German/English website. (Careful with this one: the name is Güntersberg, with a ü, but the website is www.guentersberg.de with the umlaut written out as ue)
· Edition Michael Proctor. A large collection of sacred choral music by renaissance composers. The catalogue has an estimated 850 pieces, including versions offered in different transpositions, mostly transcribed by the late Michael Proctor from original sources. The excellent website classifies pieces not only by composer and scoring but by liturgical occasion and liturgical function. (NB Prices are now quoted in sterling, not in euros as previously.)
· Edition Walhall seem to have a fair-sized list with quite a bit of early music, including some little-known names (Christoph Sätzl, d. 1655; Sulpita Cesis, b, 1577; Chiara Margarita Cozzalani, 1602-1677).
· Green Man Press - performing editions of works for voices with and without obbligato instruments. Good value.
· Jacks, Pipes and Hammers - early music, viola da gamba and recorder sheet music. A very inclusive stock, with plenty of foreign material. If they don’t stock a piece, they will try to get hold of it for you.
· London Pro Musica has a huge list ("one of the largest collections of early music in practical editions in the world" they say), mainly secular music approx 1450-1650, in cheap and very practical editions.
· Mapa Mundi - renaissance including Guerrero. Combined with Vanderbeek & Imrie Ltd. 16th century Latin church music and contemporary music.
· Mostly Music Renaissance vocal music in practical editions: Byrd, Tallis, Lassus, etc, plus madrigals by Wilbye, Bateson, etc. Also study booklets on various topics, aimed at A level music students.
· Musiekhandel Saul B. Groen Amsterdam-based specialists in mail order for early music and books
· OMI - Old Manuscripts & Incunabula describes itself as "the leading source of facsimile editions of music and art." Although OMI mainly distibutes other facsimile editions it does offer a few of its own, ranging from the Eton Choirbook to Mahler's 7th.
· Oriana Music - based in Austria. Madrigal editions with individual parts for players, lyra viol music, beginners' editions of viol music.
· Oriel Library - music for recorders
· Ostinato German publisher, website in German only; mixed list of early and modern, emphasis on vocal music
· PRB Music instrumental and vocal music from the Baroque and Classical eras, as well as original contemporary works for early and modern instruments, and voices.
· Prima la musica Urtext performing editions of Baroque and Early Classical music, "from solo motets to opera, from trio sonatas to symphonies.
· Recorder Music Mail - many useful links for recorder players.
· Rondo Publishing music for historical, modern and contemporary string instruments, also recorders; chamber music, teaching editions, consorts, and distributor for Passemezzo (facsimiles and 'fine editions') and The Notehouse People (music for young children).
· Saraband Music publish modern playing editions of early music, indexed by instrument. (Beware - 'viol music' is separate from 'bowed strings'.)
· Seicento publish their own early music editions and also supply other publishers' editions and facsimiles. Lute, viol, violin, consort music, keyboard, recorder, flute, guitar, theorbo, etc. German-based, but they accept mail order from their extensive on-line catalogue
· Tree Edition publish a good deal of lute music, mostly renaissance and baroque but some modern too. German-based.
· York Early Music Press - Choral and vocal works pre-1800, though primarily 1550-1700 scholarly performing editions with performance practice information, etc. Scores available for licensed photocopying. Linked to University of York Music Dept and York Early Music Festival.
Online calendar for music events in Herefordshire: click here to visit Arts Mail.
Eastern Early Music Forum: eemf.org.uk
North-Eastern Early Music Forum: neemf.org.uk
Thames Valley Early Music Forum: tvemf.org
Midlands Early Music Forum: memf.org.uk
Southern Early Music Forum: semf.org.uk
National Early Music Association: earlymusic.info
Early Music Forum of Scotland: emfscotland.org.uk
South-West Early Music Forum: swemf.org.uk
The Fellowship of Makers and Researchers of Historical Instruments: http://www.fomrhi.org/
Downloadable music and online catalogues.
· The IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library offers thousands of scans of public domain/copyright-free scores from many periods, plus MP3 recordings. There is also a users' forum and encouragement for composers to submit material.
· The Choral Public Domain Library (CPDL), part of Choral Wiki. The downloadable catalogue contains over 19,700 scores, with a good proportion of classical and pre-classical. There is a page of texts and translations. Readers are welcome to contribute.
· "Laymusic" - Laura Conrad's transcription site, with many freely downloadable pieces published under the imprint Serpent Publications. (At present, the site switches automatically to Serpent’s webpage.) A good supply of renaissance music in exquisite notation, usually without bar lines.
· The Mutopia Project Out-of-copyright editions computer-set by volunteers, freely downloadable as pdf files. Also MIDI files.
· Hans Mons offers a small amount of early music, mainly renaissance, free to download, in nice pdf files.
· Cipoo.net is another public domain choral music site with over 2,700 files and useful links to other sites.
· Ottaviano Petrucci is a collection of free scores containing polyphonic renaissance music, often arranged for harp or keyboard; Gregorian chant in modern notation; bicinia from Obrecht to Mozart; and music "dating from baroque until yesterday" for recorders and keyboard instruments.
· Captain Tobias Hume’s "Musicall Humours" 1605, transcribed for free download.
· Digital facsimiles of a huge amount of lute tablature.
· Steve Hendrick's Music Collection - downloadable scores, mainly renaissance dance and song.
· Alain Naigeon's score collection - pdf files of renaissance pieces. (Also in 'Encore' format, for those who have this software.) Same site leads to his sound recordings of the same pieces.
· http://www.lysator.liu.se/~tuben/scores/ Free sheet music by various 17th and 18th century composers, especially violin material including some rare Swedish, maintained by Johan Tufvesson.
· Wayne Cripps's tablature page - lots of lute music in tablature, from medieval (Dufay) to baroque. Downloadable in high-quality pdf or eps formats.
· Sheet Music Galore A large collection of sheet music for recorder, brass and bagpipe.
· The CMME Project "offers free online access to new, high-quality early music scores produced by today's leading experts", but is highly complex and not user-friendly. You can view transcriptions in several formats, with or without barlines, words, etc. Some scholarly commentary.
· Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads Digitised copies of over 30,000 ballads in several major collections. Intended for research purposes; fees required for performance or reprinting.
Sites devoted to a single instrument family.
· A clavichord page
· A dulcian page
· A recorders page
· A historical flutes page
· A harpsichord page
· A crumhorn page
· Viola da Gamba Society
· Viola da Gamba Society of America
· Société Française de Viole
· Lute Society
· Ultimate Guide to Classical Guitars and Lutes Good links for historical fretted instruments.
· A rebec project - Paul Butler's introduction to the history and construction of the rebec followed by an account of making one. Bibliography.
· The medieval viol - another page by Paul Butler, many images and much discussion of this instrument.
Playable files to download.
These files should play automatically on your computer. Quality varies.
· Virtual Wilbye Consort and Virtual Byrd Choir have madrigals by Wilbye, Ward, etc. and church music by Byrd, Victoria, etc. These are streaming RealAudio files (the sites tell you how to get players if you don't have them), all made by the one person multi-tracking.
· Early and Renaissance Music on Guitar - free MP3s, nicely played by Jon Sayles, who will send you the notation if requested.
Miscellaneous useful web-sites.
· The Early Music Muse, musings on medieval, renaissance and traditional music. Includes, amongst other things, introductions to the medieval, renaissance and baroque periods in music; brief histories of the gittern, guitar, gemshorn, lute, oud and bray harp; the background to Coventry Carol; an entry on how to read medieval square notation with a reconstruction of a medieval song.
· The Early Music Pioneers Archive (TEMPAR) is a blog which explores the lives, work and influence of important but largely forgotten pioneering figures of the early music revival movement
· Cecilia is an on-line guide to music collections in archives, libraries and museums in the UK and Ireland. Put in your town or postcode and you can find your nearest collections. Searchable by composer, date, institution, tradition, etc; covers many kinds of music, Western and non-Western.
· The Silvis Woodshed is intended to help singers learn their pieces. Midi files of a large number of pieces, a good many of early composers. Links to possibly-useful tools near the end of the page.
· Music Workshop Guide lists adult amateur music workshops and summer schools across the world, with an early music and recorder section. Organised by category, by date or by country.
· Music Teachers UK - Many useful resources for music teachers and some for the rest of us, including a free online journal whose well-informed CD reviews include occasional early music, also downloadable manuscript paper templates.
· Early Music magazine, with archives, soundclips, etc.
· Early Music Network – a wide range of information, news, links, CD recordings , videos and more.
· Here of a Sunday Morning (HOASM) is the website for a US early music program that goes out on Sunday mornings; this companion website is the reference section for the program, featuring excellent historical summaries of musical developments over many periods, extremely well organised. You can listen to the current program and some of the earlier programs on-line.
· AncientFM is a commercial-free internet radio presenting medieval and renaissance (not baroque) performances, uninterrupted by any talking. Point your browser at this site, click on WinAmp or iTunes, and it should start playing. Click on playlist to see what's actually playing.
Small publishers and stockists.
· Acadia Early Music Resources - a site run by Acadia University, Canada -- not a commercial publisher, but they produce some facsimiles that you can inspect online.
· Ancient Groove Music: editions of sacred choral music, with "the highest standards of music engraving, academic rigour and performability". Some free sheet music. Also a few books, including what looks a fine reprint of Thomas Morley's Plaine and Easy Introduction, and some essays.
· Artaria Editions specialises in rare Viennese eighteenth-century and early nineteenth repertoire - Beck, Dussek, Hofmann, and Wanhal - and works with Naxos so that you can read the same score the recording artists used.
· Brian Jordan (Access limited) Specialises in early music books and sheet music. Now has released a useful series of consort music, each volume containing several pieces at a very reasonable price.
· Cantiones Press provides "attractive and authoritative editions of Renaissance choral music".
· Cheap Trills publish 'reasonable editions of rare music' for small groups of recorders or viols, a small but interesting list. This is an American site and they don't mention postage costs.
· CD Sheet Music supply CDs containing pdf files of music. Not specifically Early Music but Bach is well represented. Order online, pay postage from the US.
· Chiltern Recorder Consort Series & Musica Domestica: mainly recorder arrangements (some for recorders or viols) in varying numbers of parts, from 2 to 15, covering renaissance, baroque, and 18th-20th century music. Hand written by Alex Ayre. Several pieces from The Triumphs of Oriana. Note Alex Ayre died in 2009. His arrangements can still be bought from Recorder Music Mail.
- Corda Music -- music for classical guitar, for strings and for early instruments
· Edition Baroque is a new small publisher from Bremen. Catalog available in English or German (everything else German-only); mainly baroque music from minor but interesting composers.
· Edition Güntersberg - solo viol music, mainly German, of 17th and 18th centuries: bilingual German/English website. (Careful with this one: the name is Güntersberg, with a ü, but the website is www.guentersberg.de with the umlaut written out as ue)
· Edition Michael Proctor. A large collection of sacred choral music by renaissance composers. The catalogue has an estimated 850 pieces, including versions offered in different transpositions, mostly transcribed by the late Michael Proctor from original sources. The excellent website classifies pieces not only by composer and scoring but by liturgical occasion and liturgical function. (NB Prices are now quoted in sterling, not in euros as previously.)
· Edition Walhall seem to have a fair-sized list with quite a bit of early music, including some little-known names (Christoph Sätzl, d. 1655; Sulpita Cesis, b, 1577; Chiara Margarita Cozzalani, 1602-1677).
· Green Man Press - performing editions of works for voices with and without obbligato instruments. Good value.
· Jacks, Pipes and Hammers - early music, viola da gamba and recorder sheet music. A very inclusive stock, with plenty of foreign material. If they don’t stock a piece, they will try to get hold of it for you.
· London Pro Musica has a huge list ("one of the largest collections of early music in practical editions in the world" they say), mainly secular music approx 1450-1650, in cheap and very practical editions.
· Mapa Mundi - renaissance including Guerrero. Combined with Vanderbeek & Imrie Ltd. 16th century Latin church music and contemporary music.
· Mostly Music Renaissance vocal music in practical editions: Byrd, Tallis, Lassus, etc, plus madrigals by Wilbye, Bateson, etc. Also study booklets on various topics, aimed at A level music students.
· Musiekhandel Saul B. Groen Amsterdam-based specialists in mail order for early music and books
· OMI - Old Manuscripts & Incunabula describes itself as "the leading source of facsimile editions of music and art." Although OMI mainly distibutes other facsimile editions it does offer a few of its own, ranging from the Eton Choirbook to Mahler's 7th.
· Oriana Music - based in Austria. Madrigal editions with individual parts for players, lyra viol music, beginners' editions of viol music.
· Oriel Library - music for recorders
· Ostinato German publisher, website in German only; mixed list of early and modern, emphasis on vocal music
· PRB Music instrumental and vocal music from the Baroque and Classical eras, as well as original contemporary works for early and modern instruments, and voices.
· Prima la musica Urtext performing editions of Baroque and Early Classical music, "from solo motets to opera, from trio sonatas to symphonies.
· Recorder Music Mail - many useful links for recorder players.
· Rondo Publishing music for historical, modern and contemporary string instruments, also recorders; chamber music, teaching editions, consorts, and distributor for Passemezzo (facsimiles and 'fine editions') and The Notehouse People (music for young children).
· Saraband Music publish modern playing editions of early music, indexed by instrument. (Beware - 'viol music' is separate from 'bowed strings'.)
· Seicento publish their own early music editions and also supply other publishers' editions and facsimiles. Lute, viol, violin, consort music, keyboard, recorder, flute, guitar, theorbo, etc. German-based, but they accept mail order from their extensive on-line catalogue
· Tree Edition publish a good deal of lute music, mostly renaissance and baroque but some modern too. German-based.
· York Early Music Press - Choral and vocal works pre-1800, though primarily 1550-1700 scholarly performing editions with performance practice information, etc. Scores available for licensed photocopying. Linked to University of York Music Dept and York Early Music Festival.
Online calendar for music events in Herefordshire: click here to visit Arts Mail.
