Finding music for performance

The role of the librarian is important for the smooth running of your group and doing it well can make a big difference.  You need systems to keep track of all the music whilst being flexible enough to cope with unexpected schedule changes, and the more disorganised members of your group who may forget or lose their music.  

The main responsibilities and challenges are: 

Sourcing music is vital to the efficient running of a music group. It normally falls to the librarian to do this and can involving obtaining music from a variety of sources.

In this resource, we’ll look at how and where you can find the music you need, and the things you need to think about when dealing with publishers and music libraries. 

Obtaining music from publishers is vital for leisure-time music groups. Whilst it can be a big and sometimes difficult task, it doesn’t have to be. We have worked with various publishers and the Music Publishers Association (MPA) on this guidance to ensure our groups can access the music they want and receive the best possible service in doing so.

Since 2019, Making Music has worked with corporate member Printed Music Licence Limited (PMLL) - part of the Music Publishers Association - and Making Music members to create an amateur choir licence, launching this April. This licence allows leisure-time choirs to photocopy sheet music.

In this recording of our webinar (original event 21 January 2022), a panel of guest speakers discussed population gender balance not being reflected in the music we play, sing and listen to, as per recent research. 

We welcomed:

• Elizabeth de Brito from The Daffodil Perspective, the world’s first gender-balanced, racially equitable classical music podcast

• Helen Sanderson, trustee for The F-list, founder of Guitar Circus and Head of Guitar Studies at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama

The Festival of Contemporary Music for All (CoMA) has kindly provided a selection of sample scores for newly commissioned instrumental and vocal pieces. Take a look and get in touch for the full parts (free of charge for members) if you would like to perform a piece at an event during the Festival weekend (4-6 March 2022).

Making Music is a member of Musica, an international project to create the world’s largest database of choral music. Through this arrangement, all our members have access to the database too. 

Musica has a powerful search tool and holds an incredible amount of detail, including information on over 200,000 pieces of choral music and biographies of over 33,000 composers.

Whether you are looking for programming inspiration, teaching resources or just browsing for fun, Musica is invaluable for anyone with an interest in choral music.

Making Music is proud to champion and celebrate leisure-time music groups and all those who work with them. We present annual awards for best music creator and best music arranger, who are nominated by Making Music member groups they have worked with. Some of the music creators and arrangers have agreed to share their work for performance with other leisure-time music groups.

Find new music for your ensemble.

A large catalogue of works providing performance materials to choirs and orchestras around the world.