Stock: 13 369 items
Last updated: July 2013

The Music Scores Collection is an assembly of digital copies of musical works of special historical, cultural or scientific value which are stored at the Russian State Library.

The most important place is allocated to music publications of mid 18—19th centuries. Connoisseurs are welcome to get acquainted with:

• samples of first printed music publications by I. S. Bach, G. F. Handel, A. Vivaldi, V. A. Mozart, L. van Beethoven, L. Cherubini and G. Rossini published in conventional and musical score printing houses of Germany, France and Italy;
• intravital editions of works by D. S. Bortniansky, M. I. Glinka, A. N. Varlamov, A. F. Lvov, A. A. Alyabiev, P. I. Turchaninov, M. P. Mussorgsky and P. I. Tchaikovsky published by such well-known Moscow and St. Petersburg’s printers as I. Beggrov, M. Bernard, V. Bessel, A. Gutheyl, F. Stellovsky and P. Jurgenson;
• a number of publications published in the printing houses of the Holy Synod and the Court Chapel.

The digital collection demonstrates a variety of polygraphic design of sheet music: from the colour saturated, richly ornamented and illustrated ones to the austere academic publications. On the big number of the copies one can find:

• stamps and seals belonging to the libraries of the Moscow Theological Academy, the Court Chapel and the Sevastopol officer’s library;
• ex-librises (bookplates) stating: ’From the library of J. G. Volgin’, ’From the books of Count S. D. Sheremetev’, ’From the library of V. Odoyevskiy’, ’From the reading library of A. Smirdin’;
• autographs and inscriptions by such Russian composers as A. S. Arensky, M. A. Balakirev, A. K. Glazunov, S. I. Taneyev, N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, P. I. Tchaikovsky, the famous Russian folk songs collector M. E. Pyatnitskiy and a great singer F. I. Shaliapin.

The collection is designed for artists, researchers, teachers and music-lovers . A part of the collection is in open access, while works of the restricted access can be viewed at one of reading rooms of the RSL.