Where to buy sheet music?

September 9, 2008 7:59 AM

Are there any places online where I can search for and buy (possibly obscure) sheet music? Or is this one of those things where you just have to go to a music store?

Specifically, I'm looking for WWV 9 Piano reduction of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Opus 125, but I'd also like to know generally where to look for sheet music. I managed to find this edition of Wagner's No. 9, but it's $165! Is that normal? Or just an indication of 'out of print'?

posted by lemonade to media & arts (12 comments total)

The Music Room is quite a good site for this in the UK. Here are their search results for Beethoven's Symphony No 9 in D minor. Maybe hit number 9 would be the sort of thing you want?
posted by rongorongo at 8:18 AM on September 9, 2008

http://www.free-scores.com/index_uk.php3
posted by rentalkarma at 8:21 AM on September 9, 2008

That's the normal price: it is in print.
posted by ssg at 8:30 AM on September 9, 2008

For anything with a choral element and a dead composer, I always go and poke around the Choral Public Domain Library and see what there is. You'll see there are PDF files of the last movement of the Beethoven here.


I tend to buy sheet music in person, but will check out Sheet Music Plus and Music Room.
posted by boudicca at 8:52 AM on September 9, 2008

Depending on where you live, there may be a good university music library nearby.
posted by spamguy at 9:22 AM on September 9, 2008

Sorry, I misread and hadn't realised you were specifically looking for the Wagner reduction.

As far as general free sites, the other one I should have listed is Sheet Music Fox, but they never seem to have what I want.
posted by boudicca at 9:31 AM on September 9, 2008

It might very well be available for free online - most music this old is public domain, even as a piano reduction. I'm looking.

Thus far, the closest I've come is this free download of the complete score. I'm still looking for the piano reduction.
posted by koeselitz at 9:39 AM on September 9, 2008

Ah. Always trust the International Music Score Library Project. Here is Beethoven's Ninth, complete with Franz Liszt's piano reduction of the score, for free download.

They're a good source to go to if you're looking for public-domain scores. And most scores are public domain.
posted by koeselitz at 9:51 AM on September 9, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Fantastic, I'll take it! Right now I can't even remember why I was looking for Wagner's rendition, maybe I didn't know about Liszt? I was able to find Liszt's piano reduction at free-scores.com, as well as koeselitz' link--and the International Music Score Library Project looks fantastic, that will keep me busy forever, so thanks!
posted by lemonade at 11:30 AM on September 9, 2008

lemonade: Right now I can't even remember why I was looking for Wagner's rendition, maybe I didn't know about Liszt?

I realized just after I'd commented that you'd asked for the Wagner reduction. That's a tough one for me to find - I can't even find the score for sale separately. If you find later on that you'd really like the Wagner version, your best bet would probably be to go to a library and ask if they can find a copy of Wagner's complete scores and photocopy it.

As far as why you might have been looking for it, my guess would be that you might have heard this recording of Wagner's arrangement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 played by Noriko Ogawa and conducted by Masaaki Suzuki in 1998.
posted by koeselitz at 12:33 PM on September 9, 2008

Reading the review that I linked there, it appears that the Wagner version still has parts for voices, whereas the Liszt version is only for solo piano. Is that what you'd wanted?
posted by koeselitz at 12:35 PM on September 9, 2008

I think I found a reference to Wagner's piano reduction, and didn't think to check to see if there were others available. I want the piano reduction, not the voices, so I'll give Liszt's version a try (since it's available), and maybe in the meantime dig out the recordings for both versions to see how badly I want the Wagner. Thanks koeselitz!
posted by lemonade at 9:42 AM on September 10, 2008