Music Scores

Today my Dad took me to Gramercy music to get some violin scores for ABRSM Diploma. The scores were all catalogued by composer, which is rather impressive, because truthfully, I have never been there before. The prices of music scores is simply shocking. Fortunately they were having a sale.

They way some shoppers just moving around with a stack of sheet music in their arms are terrifying. It was as if they were librarians, just that they were going to buy all of them. One stack, at a glance can easily be seen to be worth at least 500, and will even have a possibility of shooting into the thousands range.

This makes me think of a really frustrating thought, why are all these music scores set at such a high price? Many classical pieces are already in the free domain, so downloading them from sites such as IMSLP or Mutopia is not illegal. But examination boards require that the candidate buys an original copy from a renown publisher, and that is what professional performers are seeming to always do too, carrying nicely bounded cover pages, with the glittering letter of the publisher and piece title embedded into it, around.

I only needed the Scherzo, the last 4 pages from Brahms Sonaten, but they just don't sell them alone


$74.80 for three pieces, inclusive of piano part.