You are here
Music

Detail from Kangaroo hop music score for voice and piano, 1916
Description
The Music collection includes over 300,000 musical scores and sheet music items as well as work by composers, performers and music organisations. You can find:
- Australian published and unpublished sheet music covering a range of musical styles
- historical and contemporary music, in notated form
- performance posters, programs and tickets
- catalogues from the music trade
- archival sound recordings of folk music and dance
- music notation software and keyboards in some reading rooms
- some overseas music to support research and study
The Library primarily collects music in notated form and does not generally hold multiple vocal or instrumental parts to support musical performance. Commercially recorded music is held at Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive.
Highlights
- Australian Sheet Music - highly decorative covers of sheet music documenting performing arts history. Includes advertisements for stage and cinema productions, the latest musical instruments, and recordings.
- State Theatre Collection – over 13,000 published orchestrations, band arrangements and instrumental music composed or arranged for small orchestra to accompany silent movies. Primarily used in Australian film theatres from 1900 to the 1930s. Many record film screening dates and distribution stamps.
- Symphony Australia collection - a collection of chamber, choral, operatic, orchestral, piano and vocal works by Australian composers and arrangers from colonial music to the 1970s. Includes scores and parts used by the ABC for performance and original manuscripts.
- Helm collection – c.7000 scores of 18th and 19th century European and English vocal
