In a tough economy, many school districts will cut back on funding for classroom materials. Every little bit that a band director can save may help him or her purchase something important later in the year.
”One area of the music education budget that we hate to cut back on is the purchase of new music,” says MENC member Chad Criswell, “but if that happens, fortunately there are legal sources to download free concert band music.” Saving money this way may help directors fund other aspects of their programs.
Criswell has discovered several sites that provide access to hundreds of pieces of public domain concert band music from masters such as Holst, Strauss, Sousa, and dozens of others. Below, he comments on three of the most prominent:
Band Music PDF Library
“One of the most convenient and well-organized directories of free concert band sheet music comes from a community band in North Royalton, OH. Over a period of several years this organization has scanned, organized, and cataloged hundreds of marching band and octavo size concert band works and made them available to the public as free PDF downloads. There are many significant compositions represented here, including Strauss's Blue Danube Waltz, Holst's First Suite in E♭, and Sousa marches including the Stars and Stripes, Washington Post, and Semper Fidelis. All are available to download in PDF format (including the individual parts), although, as was often the tradition at the time, very few have full conductor's scores. The majority of the music in this archive is high school or collegiate level literature.”
United States Library of Congress Music for the Nation
“Another excellent and very broad archive of public domain concert band (and other instrumental) sheet music is provided by the US Library of Congress. Their free Music for the Nation collection houses thousands of scanned pieces of music from the years 1820-1885. Users can print copies of the works and students can use them for projects. The library is somewhat difficult to search, and finding specific pieces for concert band can be time consuming. Again, most of the titles in this collection are more advanced pieces of music and not necessarily suited for beginners.”
Mutopia Project Music Archive
“The Mutopia Project sheet music archive houses what is perhaps the largest collection of public domain classical sheet music available on the Internet. Over 1500 different pieces of music are available, mostly being significant works from classical masters. There are a few concert band pieces available in this archive, but it also serves as an excellent resource for directors that want to arrange classical pieces for their own ensembles. All pieces of music are available in PDF and Lilypond music notation formats.”
Chad Criswell, technology feature writer for MENC Teaching Music magazine, teaches in the SE Polk Community Schools in Altoona, IA. He provides a thorough and updated listing of all sources of free concert band sheet music on his Web site.
--Elizabeth Lasko, April 21, 2009. © MENC: The National Association for Music Education