About BandMusic PDF Library

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, these bands attained stardom status at fairs, centennials and exhibitions, and they were some of the first to have their music widely distributed on recordings. At the same time, community bands thrived across America, sponsored by cities and towns, businesses and civic organizations.

Who Are We?

We are BandMusic PDF Library, conservators and stewards of our band music heritage from the time of John Philip Sousa, R. B. Hall and Henry Fillmore—the Golden Age of the American Town Band. Our special focus is public domain music from the 1870s through 1924.

Beginnings

Music from this time period was donated to North Royalton (Ohio) Community Band—boxes and boxes and boxes of time-worn, brown-edged sheet music.

Most pages were too fragile to hand out so we decided to scan the music. Once everything was scanned, the next logical step was to share it with other bands. Just in time, our first webmaster, Graham Nasby, stepped up and agreed to create a library website and host it.

Evolution

BandMusic PDF Library has been online since February 2006. Our first thought was to have about 50 pieces online—mostly marches and a few dances. That number soon surpassed the 100 mark. Fast forward a few years and we’ve passed 4,000 titles, with no end in sight. And now the rich library holdings include marches of every description, all kinds of dances, ragtime, major period concert works, and solos with band accompaniment for a wide variety of instruments including voice. All three websites that formerly contained our music are now rolled into one.

With this much music online, our former plan of operation became unworkable. The current plan is to post everything, then go through and make as many pieces playable as possible. This will necessitate inventorying every set, filling in missing pages and transposing Piccolo and Horn parts to modern keys. Learn more about how you can help »