There is a great store for printed sheet music for plucked string orchestras in Germany: Trekel Verlag. But many mandolin compositions from the beginning of the 20th century are not for sale anymore anywhere. (There are some exceptions, for example, the Otto Wrede Regina-Verlag appears to still sell music from about 100 years ago!) On this site, I am collecting links to sheet music for plucked string orchestras that is in the public domain and available on-line.
Mandolin sheet music
Here is mandolin sheet music written by myself or copyright free sheet music from the archive of the Braunschweig Mandolin Orchestra.
Links to websites with mandolin sheet music
Classical Mandolin:
- Michael Reichenbach’s site with links to music by Cristofaro, Munier, Schick, Kollmaneck, Wohlfahrt and others. Solo mandolin and plucked string orchestra. His Musicaneo website.
- “Just classical guitar”: website with 100s of PDFs of (mostly) Italian guitar and mandolin music. Solo, duo and orchestral arrangements.
- Compositions for mandolin/guitar/lute by Calace. (Maybe all of them?)
- IMSLP categories: mandolin, guitar, lute. (100s for mandolin and 1000s for guitar and lute.)
- John Goodin’s site with links to his own work and works in the public domain including early 20th century North American music.
- Some early 20th century mandolin tunes from USA.
- Mutopia music for ensembles (Barbella, Gervasio and others)
- The journal Il Plettro from 1906 to 1943 and the journal Vita Mandolinistica from 1901 to 1910.
- The Classical Guitar Library has a few pages with sheet music for mandolin and guitar or mandolin quartett. (Mostly Italian pieces from the early 20th century.)
- The University of Rochester Library has some sheet music. For example, searching for “mandolin” retrieves copies of the Crescendo Journal.
- Not mandolin, but zither music from Germany that was played in USA in the early 20th century.
- Japanese site with lists of mandolin composers and compositions. No sheet music, but a very comprehensive site.
Folk and Bluegrass:
- TEF files for Bluegrass music. Solo mandolin with guitar chords. A free TEF-file viewer is available.
- Jan Wolters’ arrangements for mandolin and other instruments (folk songs, children’s songs).
- Brian Oberlin’s site (Bluegrass and Fiddle tunes, Christmas songs, chords etc)
