Early Music Online has digitised over 320 volumes of 16th-century anthologies of printed music, from holdings at the British Library.

Click here to browse Early Music Online via Royal Holloway’s digital repository.

Click here to browse Early Music Online via the British Library Catalogue, which gives access to catalogue records for all the digitised volumes, searchable by composer name and title of composition.

These digitised volumes contain approximately 10,000 musical compositions, which have been individually indexed. The volumes mainly consist of partbooks of vocal polyphony, but also include some early printed tablatures for keyboard or plucked string instruments. They include music printed in Italy, Germany, France and England. Early Music Online was funded by JISC’s 2011 Rapid Digitisation Programme.

You may use the digitised content on Early Music Online in any way and for any such purposes that are conducive to education, teaching, learning, private study and/or research as long as you are in compliance with the terms and conditions of our licence. You may not use the content for commercial purposes. The digitised content is copyright © The British Library Board, and is made available for non-commercial use under JISC's Open Education User Licence (PDF).

Project Director: Dr Stephen Rose, Music Department, Royal Holloway, University of London.

Project Manager: Dr Sandra Tuppen, The British Library, London

The project team included Dr Katherine Butler, Dr James Clements, Ian Davis, Dr Loukia Drosopoulou, Ruth Hellen, Matthew Laube, Dr Esperanza Rodríguez-García, Dr Rupert Ridgewell, Andra Patterson, Chris Scobie, Mark Summers, Dr Vassilis Vavoulis and Susi Woodhouse.