Printed Music

Although the Department of Printed Scores and Recordings was formed in 1931, its history is as long as that of the library itself. Published works of music entered the library as statutory copies, as well as being purchased and donated from private collections. They were kept in the Department of the Arts and made available to readers from the early years after the opening of the library.

The most intensive work on the musical stocks began with Vladimir's Stasov's arrival in the Department of the Arts and was continued by such notable historians of music as Livery Sachetti and Andrei Rimsky-Korsakov. Thanks to them and their successors the collection of sheet music was made into a separate department, with Vladimir Saitov as its first head (1931-42). Since the early 1960s the department has had a recordings section.

The library's sheet music stocks are some of the largest and most valuable not only in the country, but worldwide. They contain an extremely broad range of publications produced inside and outside Russia from the sixteenth century onwards. At present the collection of sheet music numbers over 340 000 items, as well as some 40 000 recordings and 8 000 music reference books.