Music From The Golden Age Of The American Town Band

The BandMusic PDF Library contains musical gems from the time of Gilmore, Sousa, Pryor, Liberati, Goldman, Reeves and other professional bands that were wildly popular in their day. In addition to touring the country, performing in cities and towns across America, the bands attained stardom status at fairs, centennials and exhibitions. They were some of the first to have their music widely distributed on recordings -- in on the ground floor of the recording industry.

Current number of pieces in library: 634 (682 entries)
Number of "Print & Play" pieces: 93 (118 entries)

News

Each month we will release approximately 10 additional pieces to the Band Music PDF Library.

2010-07-25 - Jul 2010 release, theme Vintage Masterpieces, we now have 634 pieces (93 print/play) - more info
2010-06-01 - Jun 2010 release, theme Glorius Variety, we now have 626 pieces (84 print/play) - more info
2010-03-04 - After 5 years of hard work on this project, we are taking a short break. New updates will come after we come back from vacation - more info
2010-03-04 - Mar 2010 release, theme is Regions, we now have 618 pieces (80 print/play) - more info
2010-02-06 - Feb 2010 release, theme is Dedications, we now have 604 pieces (73 print/play) - more info
2010-01-04 - Jan 2010 release, theme is Ethnic Diversity, we now have 590 pieces (66 print/play) - more info
more news

History of the Library

During the golden age of the town band (1880-1922), many communities were fortunate enough to have their own town bands, forerunners of our community bands today. Many band leaders kept their own private collections of band sheet music, which ended up being passed onto their descendants. The North Royalton (Ohio) Community Band fell heir to three such collections and in 2006, decided to set up a non-profit corporation under which these collections could be made publicly available.

Our Holdings / Public Access

Due to the copyright being expired in the USA for these collections, the BandMusic PDF library is able to make its holdings available for free download in pdf (adobe acrobat) format. Through our website, music from the library is now available for download as a public service for performing, studying and research, authentic material for arrangers to set for modern bands; and for a multitude of other uses.

If you download any music from BandMusic PDF, it's yours to do with as you please; print it, perform it, edit and arrange it. There is no charge and you are welcome to share in this wealth of material.

Help Needed: Finding Music & Missing Parts

If you gain some benefit from using this resource, and would like to be a part of this experience, please find out the many ways of how to help.
Also, some of our pieces are missing parts. View the list of missing parts we are looking for.

PRINTING TIPS

Music posted on BandMusic PDF is in PDF files formatted to print at 8.5x11 inches. When printing from Adobe Acrobat Reader (which is a free download), set Page Handling on the Print panel to: "Auto Rotate and Center" and "Fit to Printer Margins" (or "Fit to Paper") to make this happen.