Sublime and ridiculous

If you're interested in looking at any Mozart other than L'Oca del Cairo, the homepage for the Neue Mozart Ausgabe online is at http://nma.redhost24-001.com/mambo/index.php

Another excellent musical site is the Chopin Early Editions collection at the University of Chicago. As they explain it:

"The Chopin collection at the University of Chicago Library includes over 400 first and early printed editions of musical compositions by Frédéric Chopin, maintained in the Special Collections Research Center. Chopin Early Editions consist of digitized images of all scores in the University of Chicago Library's Chopin collection. Users can search or browse Chopin Early Editions via a variety of data points, including titles, genres, and plate numbers."

Have a look at an original edition of say the Mazurkas, compared to a modern Associated Board edition. It's eye-opening to find out which bits are actually Chopin, and just how much has been added by the AB editors: fingerings, pedallings and more.

Actually it's amazing how much musical source material is now on the internet. How about the Jean-Baptiste Lully collection at the University of North Texas - who also have digitised copies of several dozen other substantial 18th century works in their Virtual Rare Book Room. Godfrey's Bookshelf is another super site, with digitised copies of music books by Dowland, Robinson, Hume, Playford and others. And then there are the collections of the major libraries. For instance, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France has an extensive digitised collection of rare books at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ . Search under the heading Musique, and up pops a list of 251 volumes including Fronimo (Galilei), Le Nuove Musiche (Caccini), L'art de toucher le clavecin (Couperin), Il ballarino (Caroso) and others, all viewable and downloadable in full. Magic.

Sometimes scholarship can go horribly wrong. Most of the website of the respected lute scholar Arthur Ness, editor of the pioneering complete works of Francesco da Milano in the 70's, is taken up with long and bitter rants against the publisher Matanya Ophee. This has been going on for years. They're as bad as each other. At one point Ophee was blacklisted from the (normally freewheeling) internet lute mailing list for his endless posts attacking Ness. This sort of vendetta destroys the dignity of both men. Someone should throw a bucket of cold water over them.