I just read on The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross that David Packard of the Packard Humanities Institute has launched an online archive containing all of Mozart’s works. According to the License Agreement for the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe (Digital Mozart Edition):


The purpose of this web site is to make Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s musical compositions widely and conveniently accessible to the public, for personal study and for educational and classroom use.

Wholesale downloading or reuse of the contents of this website is prohibited under all circumstances, whether commercial or otherwise.

The works of Mozart should be considered in the public domain. Restrictions may, however, apply to the scholarly edition as such, the graphic representation, and the reproduction of images of source materials.

The works by Mozart are more than two hundred years old and are to be treated as historical documents.

Since 1955, the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe has been published by Bärenreiter-Verlag, Cassel (www.baerenreiter.com); printed copies of any volume of the edition may be obtained from authorized dealers. For further information please contact the publisher.

Check out the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe here.

Making the work of Mozart more publicly available, searchable, and browsable is a great service to the music community. According to the license agreement one must still rent/purchase the music for live performances and the like, but this archiving of Mozart’s music will be a great asset to musicians everywhere. Hopefully this will be a trend in the publishing industry and not just an isolated incident.

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