Early Music Online

Early Music Online is a new internet resource consisting of digitised copies of early printed music. So far, the project has digitised more than 300 of the world’s earliest surviving volumes of printed music, from copies at the British Library. The digitised music is freely available to all online.

There are several ways to access the digitised content.

You can browse the collection in Royal Holloway's digital repository

You can also view detailed descriptions of all the items and refine your search further using the British Library Catalogue. Included in the catalogue are full details of each digitised book, with an inventory of the contents of each, searchable by composer name, title of composition, date and subject, and with links to the digitised content. (Click 'I want this' in the Library catalogue to access the digitised content.)

Full descriptions of each volume, with links to the digitised content, have also been included in the RISM UK database and COPAC, enabling researchers to locate and access this digitised content by several different means.

You may use the digitised content on Early Music Online in any way and for any such purposes that are conducive to education, teaching, learning, private study and/or research as long as you are in compliance with the terms and conditions of our licence.