Art Song Central

As Art Song Central is not yet mature, it seems reasonable to discuss here what it intends to become.

Art Song Central is envisioned as a centralized resource for the voice student or teacher to find public domain sheet music, as well as other supporting materials. It will also provide information about 20th and 21st Century works worth purchasing, and where to get sheet music and recordings of them.

Any hosted scans of sheet music will be carefully vetted to be sure that they are in the public domain by US law. However, no warranty should be implied as to their suitability or legal status, nor can the site be responsible for the status of materials to which it links. Supporting materials created by the site remain the property of Art Song Central. If you believe copyrighted material has been posted in error, please use the contact form to let us know.

Unlike sheet music collections hosted by the Library of Congress, it will be easy to locate, download and print individual songs. All songs hosted on this site will be available as PDF files, not as a collection of images that must each be downloaded individually. Also, this collection intends to include quality editions of many more pieces from the standard repertoire.

Unlike the experimental sheet music collections hosted at Indiana University, the music will also be presented at a resolution that will be legible when printed.

Emphasis will be placed on the sheet music itself, so download times won’t be hampered by cover illustrations and advertisements.

Finally, an attempt will be made to provide or link to supporting materials with each song that is posted, such as a word by word translation, an mp3 of the song, or even an mp3 of the accompaniment.

While an emphasis will be placed on quickly establishing a substantial library using scanned sheet music, we will, as resources permit, transcribe songs so they can be transposed or edited at will.

Art Song Centrals’ online library has a target of 500 hosted titles by August, 2007, and 1000 hosted titles by December 2007. It now seems this target is unreasonable without more support. However, the library will continue to have regular additions. There is plenty of public domain material to post, but each post takes time to research and compile.

The database has now been switched to Unicode, and we will be using the Unicode symbols for sharps (♯) and flats (♭) in the song posts. Modern operating systems should display these correctly, as long as a broad-spectrum Unicode font is installed.

Art Song Central has been years in the making, and is a personal project of David Newman.