Description
This collection of PDF sheet music compiled by the Clarinet Institute of Los Angeles is a fantastic value. Don’t let the clarinet part of the name throw you off. This is a huge collection of bassoon music—800+ works. Most of the music is in the public domain and is available elsewhere on the internet, but I think this collection is well worth the $15.75 price based on these criteria:
- The collection includes works for bassoon solo, bassoon and piano, bassoon duet, bassoon duets with other instruments, double reed quartet, bassoon quartet, woodwind quartet, orchestra excerpts, full orchestra parts for select concertos, and more.
- Many of the pieces are in the public domain, but many are not. There are original pieces and arrangements only available in this collection.
- David Schorr—the arranger of many of the bassoon and piano pieces—has given his permission to record his arrangements and post them on YouTube. (Take that, ASCAP.)
- The arranged works vary in difficulty. Some are very easy, which is great for beginning students.
- You don’t have to scour the internet looking for PDFs!
- It’s easy to transfer them to a digital reader (I use forScore on my iPad).
The collection comes as either a flash drive or a DVD. The files are arranged by instrumentation. This wasn’t quite enough organization for me, so I further arranged everything by musical time period and whether or not it is an arrangement. With 800 works that project took a while, but it was a lot of fun to open up each file and see what it was. Click here for reviews of music from the archive.
My students and I are busy recording many of the pieces from this collection. Get yourself a copy of this collection and help us make recordings!
