IMSLP Sheet Music Scraper

Scrape free public domain sheet music from IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project / Petrucci Music Library) — the largest collection of free sheet music in the world with 200,000+ works.

What it does

Search by composer name or work title to get structured metadata for classical music scores:

• Title & Composer — Parsed from IMSLP's canonical format
• Opus/Catalogue Numbers — Op., WoO, BWV, K., RV, D., HWV, Hob., etc.
• Key — Musical key (e.g. "C-sharp minor")
• Instrumentation — e.g. "piano", "orchestra", "string quartet"
• Genre/Style — Classical, Romantic, Baroque, etc.
• Year of Composition
• Movements — Parsed movement list
• Edition Count — Number of available PDF editions
• PDF URLs — Direct links to downloadable score PDFs
• Source URL — Link back to the IMSLP work page

Input

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
searchQueries	string[]	["Beethoven"]	Composer names or work titles
maxListings	integer	50	Max works to return (1-1000)
scrapeDetails	boolean	false	Visit work pages for full metadata
proxyConfiguration	object	—	Optional proxy settings

Search modes

• Composer search (e.g. "Beethoven", "Bach") — Lists all works in that composer's category
• Work search (e.g. "Moonlight Sonata", "Clair de Lune") — Searches across all works

Detail scraping

With scrapeDetails: false (default), you get title, composer, opus number, and source URL — fast and lightweight.

With scrapeDetails: true, each work page is visited to extract key, instrumentation, genre, year, movements, PDF links, and edition counts. This is slower but provides rich metadata.

Output example

{
  "title": "Piano Sonata No.14, Op.27 No.2",
  "composer": "Beethoven, Ludwig van",
  "opusNumber": "Op.27 No.2",
  "key": "C-sharp minor",
  "instrumentation": "piano",
  "genre": "Classical",
  "year": "1802",
  "movements": ["Adagio sostenuto", "Allegretto - Trio", "Presto agitato"],
  "editions": 85,
  "pdfUrls": ["https://imslp.org/images/..."],
  "sourceUrl": "https://imslp.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No.14,_Op.27_No.2_(Beethoven,_Ludwig_van)",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-04-26T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Use cases

• Music researchers — Catalog and analyze classical music metadata at scale
• Music educators — Find free sheet music for teaching
• App developers — Build music discovery tools with structured data
• Digital humanities — Analyze composers, genres, and time periods
• Performers — Discover available editions of specific works

Technical notes

• Uses IMSLP's MediaWiki API for fast, reliable search and category listing
• Individual work pages are scraped with Cheerio for full metadata
• Respects rate limits with built-in delays when scraping details
• All sheet music on IMSLP is public domain or Creative Commons licensed