The catalogue includes sheet music, books, cassettes and CDs from catalogues of most recognised sheet music publishers.

The catalogue is searchable by composer, instrument and title in any combination. We have standardised titles and spellings to help as far as we can, but as with everything there is a knack - hopefully these tips might help...

Each search can work on a single word, or even part of a word, so "achm" entered in the Composer box will find "Rachmaninov", for example. It isn't clever about recognising spaces within a title - it will just try to match *all* words (or part words) listed which are more than 3 characters long. We ignore the difference between capital letters and lower case.

COMPOSER names have been standardised - you only need the initials where they're needed to identify the correct one, for example: "Beethoven" doesn't need initials, whereas "Bach" does - typing "bach\ c" will find CPE Bach, but ignore JS Bach. If in doubt, ignore the initials unless you need to reduce the number of entries found. Please note - type the surname first, then initial (if needed).

INSTRUMENT descriptions have also been standardised and are spelt out in full. We may have one or two areas of inconsistency in the small ensemble descriptions, but normally using the traditional descriptions (such as "Piano\ Trio" - don't forget the "\") will score a hit. If all else fails, try "ensemble"! Choral work uses the "SA", "SATB" combinations and large scale works may use the description "vocal\ score".

TITLES are also listed in full, where possible, and mostly in English except where the work is well known in another language (e.g. Debussy's "Claire de Lune"). Give it a try - if you don't like the system, Email us and we'll see how we can improve matters further. Some titles also distinguish between editions, such as "URTEXT" and "CLOTHBOUND".

Searching works best where you can enter text that is likely to locate the work you need, but few - if any - others! Try it out!