Research Guides: Primary Sources for Music: Facsimiles & Digital Copies

Explore Digital Images on the Web

Early English Books Online This link opens in a new window
Contains digital facsimile page images of a large collection of work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and British North America, and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700.
Parker Library on the Web This link opens in a new window
Offers access to high resolution digital images of more than 550 manuscripts at Corpus Christ College, from the 6th century through the 16th. The manuscripts are described and annotated, with references to relevant editions, translations, and other literature.
Gallica This link opens in a new window
Access the digital library from the Bibliothque Nationale of France. Includes a variety of primary source materials and public domain resources. Mainly in French.

Music Treasures Consortium
Access the digital collections of five important music collections: the British Library, Harvard University, the Juilliard School, the Library of Congress, the Morgan Library & Museum, and the New York Public Library.
DIAMM: Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music
Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music DIAMM obtains and archives digital images of European sources of medieval polyphonic music, captured directly from the original document.
Digital Scriptorium
An image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts in American libraries.
Library of Congress, Digital Collections Portal
Access hundreds of digital collections, containing photos, sheet music, and more, housed at the Library of Congress.
British Library Digital Collections
Access to thousands of digital manuscripts and audio recordings.
Juilliard Manuscript Collection
Digitized images of an important collection of manuscripts, sketches, engravers' proofs, and first editions of major composers' works (also available through the Music Treasures Consortium).
Beethoven-Haus Bonn, Digital Archives
Around 40,000 digital facsimiles of musical manuscripts, documents, music prints, pictures, etc.
Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Felix - Werke
Complete edition of Mendelssohn's works published 1874-1744 by Breitkopf & Härtel, from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.
Letters and Documents of Mozart and His Family
Scans of half of the known letters written by the Mozart family.

Find Published Facsimiles and Microforms

To find facsimiles in the Emory Libraries, use Library Search.

Records for facsimiles of manuscripts have one of these subject headings:

Music—Manuscripts—Facsimiles
[Composer name] —Manuscripts—Facsimiles

The library also hold facsimiles of some early printed editions. The searches below may yield these as well, unless you include "manuscripts" as a search term.

Search strategies

Try a subject search on the composer's name along with facsimiles. e.g., Subject: beethoven facsimiles.
For specific works, search the composer's name, title [uniform title if known] and facsimiles or facsimile*.
- E.g., mozart zauberflote facsimile* will find facsimiles of "The Magic Flute."
- Weihnachts-Oratorium and facsimile* will find facsimiles of Bach's Christmas Oratorio.
For collections of more than one piece, the shelf mark of the holding library or the popular title of the manuscript (e.g., Egerton 3665, Tregian Manuscript, Squarcialupi codex)

Browse the shelves to find many of the Music and Media Library's facsimiles.

Many facsimiles are classed in ML96.4 and ML96.5 and are kept together in a special "folio" section. These may be checked out.

However, numerous other facsimiles are not kept here. These include:

Items in microform
Items classed by their instrumentation (These are often early printed works.)
Materials in the Pitts Theology Library
Facsimiles kept in the Rose Library due to their cost and rareness
Facsimiles in sets, e.g., Renaissance Music in Facsimile

To find microfilm and microfiche collections at Emory, also use Library Search.

Search for these as if they were printed materials—there's no subject heading for microfilms, microfiche, or other microforms.

If you know that a microform set is held at Emory, but you don't know the title, try limiting searches to LOCATION: MICROFORMS.

Notable sets at Emory:

For Bach: Musikhandschriften der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preussischer Kulturbesitz. Teil I: Die Bach-Sammlung.
For Beethoven: Musikhandschriften der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preussischer Kulturbesitz. Teil 3: Die Beethoven-Sammlung.