Ten free sites that bring you information on music and composers.

Music and Media Librarian Lindsay Hansen of the California State University Northridge has an very interesting article in the November/December issue of Online. In Music to Researchers’ Ears she looks at ten high quality sites that can be used for researching music.

Here are her top 10 choices:

Nat Geo Music, National Geographic’s database of world music. The site includes podcasts, song samples, and guides.

Neue Mozart Ausgabe/Digital Mozart Edition is Stiftung Mozarteum’s collection of Mozart Urtexts, i.e. the earliest versions of the composer’s music.

Black Grooves is published by the Archives of African American Music & Culture (AAAMC) at Indiana University. The sites presents new releases and reissues of sound recordings featuring compositions or performances by black artists, including gospel, blues, jazz, funk, soul, and hip-hop-as well as classical music composed or performed by black artists.

The CHICO (The Cultural Heritage Initiative for Community Outreach) Instrument Encyclopedia is hosted by the University of Michigan’s Schools of Information and Music. The site features musical instruments from around the world.

The Great Conversations in Music site features five different categories of films: The Pianists, The Composers, Chamber Music, The Virtuosos, and The Conductors. The films are from the the US Library of Congress and PBS.

The Canadian Encyclopedia of Music has a free online version sponsored by the National Library of Canada. (Note that the link given on the Online site is misspelled. That link leads to a advertising site).

Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues is a site from PBS that presents Martin Scorsese’s seven-film series about the blues. There are biographies and context for the artists featured in the film, including so-called “essential listening.”

The Met Opera Archives has opera synopses, historical pictures, time-lines, facts and much more.

International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) is a wiki of public domain music scores. However, things changes fast on the Web. Since Hansen wrote her article the site has apparently both faced hosting problems and got a cease and desist letter from a music publisher. The scores are not available at the moment.

Beethoven-Haus Bonn has a online archive with music manuscripts, music clips, portraits, and sound files of letters written by Beethoven.

Go to Hansen’s article over at Online for reviews of this sites and a comparison as regards strengths and weaknesses.

See also the Pandia Plus Directory for more sites covering the music scene.