The Mutopia Project is a volunteer-run effort to create a library of free content

Free content

Free content, or free information, is any kind of functional work, artwork, or other creative content that meets the definition of a free cultural work...

 sheet music

Sheet music

Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...

, in a way similar to Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...

's library of public domain books.

The music is reproduced from old scores that are out of copyright

Copyright

Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...

. The new scores are typeset with GNU LilyPond

GNU LilyPond

GNU LilyPond is a computer program for music engraving. One of LilyPond's major goals is to produce scores that are engraved with traditional layout rules, reflecting the era when scores were engraved by hand....

 and distributed in PDF

Portable Document Format

Portable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....

, PostScript

PostScript

PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...

, MIDI

Musical Instrument Digital Interface

MIDI is an industry-standard protocol, first defined in 1982 by Gordon Hall, that enables electronic musical instruments , computers and other electronic equipment to communicate and synchronize with each other...

, and LilyPond format.

Currently, there are more than 1600 pieces of music available, more than half of which are pieces for piano. There are also many pieces for voice, and various other musical instruments. The Mutopia Project home page has a list of links to the most recently added pieces.

See also

• List of online music databases
• Public domain resources
• Open music
  Open music
  Open Music is music that is shareable, available in "source code" form, allows derivative works and is free of cost for non-commercial use. It is the concept of "open source" computer software applied to music...
  
  
• Free content
  Free content
  Free content, or free information, is any kind of functional work, artwork, or other creative content that meets the definition of a free cultural work...
  
  
• Project Gutenberg
  Project Gutenberg
  Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
  
  , a similar effort but for all cultural works, not just sheet music.
• International Music Score Library Project
  International Music Score Library Project
  The International Music Score Library Project , also known as the Petrucci Music Library after publisher Ottaviano Petrucci, is a project for the creation of a virtual library of public domain music scores, based on the wiki principle...
  
  , a similar music cataloguing project, that collects both typeset and scanned
  Image scanner
  In computing, an image scanner—often abbreviated to just scanner—is a device that optically scans images, printed text, handwriting, or an object, and converts it to a digital image. Common examples found in offices are variations of the desktop scanner where the document is placed on a glass...
  
   scores.
• Werner Icking Music Archive
  Werner Icking Music Archive
  The Werner Icking Music Archive , is a web archive of liberally-licensed sheet music of public domain music. The scores are electronically typeset by volunteers and distributed in PDF, often accompanied by their typesetting files. WIMA continues the defunct GMD Music Archive and is named after...
  
  
• Choral Public Domain Library
  Choral Public Domain Library
  The Choral Public Domain Library is a sheet music archive which focuses on choral and vocal music in the public domain or otherwise freely available for printing and performing .-Description:...
  
  

External links

• Mutopia Project home page
• Mutopia Project mirror (USA)
• Mutopia Project mirror (Portugal)
• [ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/multimedia/mutopia/ Mutopia Project archive via ftp]