To commemorate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, the International Mozart Foundation has created an online database of 24,000 of his works (in sheet music form), all available for download, for free. Obviously, it’s for personal use only, etc. and all the standard legalese applies.

The site and database, called the Digital Mozart Edition, is searchable in German and English, by KV, type of work, key of music, and editor. Here’s an article from the International Herald Tribune about the project.

Seriously, don’t you love it when the Internet facilitates sort of thing? The site’s been experiencing unbelievable traffic, so if you can’t connect immediately, try a bit later. I wasn’t able to access their servers at all until this afternoon. But, once I did, it took me no time at all to find the 12 piano variations “Ah, vous dirai-je Maman” — a.k.a. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star/The Alphabet Song, for example. Pretty simple search interface, and quick results. The sheet music is in JPEG format, so you have to save the images first before printing them (at least as far as I can tell). But it’s really a small inconvenience to pay given the incredible access they’re offering!

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