Finding the Music You Need

The RIAM Piano Albums and other RIAM publications are available through a network of retailers throughout Ireland: these are listed on our Where to Buy Music page.

You can order the prescribed music in the RIAM Exam syllabus through your nearest music supplier, e.g.: Opus II in Cork, McCullough’s, EMS and Walton’s in Dublin). The Contemporary Music Centre can supply copies of prescribed works by Irish composers.

Internationally, the UK-based sites Musicroom.com and Schott Music supply materials from a large range of publishers. SheetMusicPlus and J. W. Pepper are US-based, so materials from these suppliers may take longer to arrive.

When compiling the syllabus, the RIAM is careful to select material which is readily available in print – however we cannot guarantee that it will be available for the lifetime of the syllabus. Both Abe Books and Amazon are useful sources for out-of-print materials. Allegro Music (http://allegro.co.uk) can supply out-of-print titles from OUP's catalogue.

If you want to review a range of repertoire before buying music, you may consider looking for it on the public-domain site IMSLP.org. Note that IMSLP tends to provide older editions of works which may not be reliable (see below for selecting editions).

If you are a member of a library which participates in the Music-Pal scheme, you can get access to consult (but not always borrow from) music collections in a variety of libraries in your area.

Selecting editions

Editions cited are listed as suggestions only – you may choose another edition provided it is sufficiently reliable. A lot of older editions of Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, etc. contain marks of phrasing, dynamics and articulation which were added by the editor: these tend to obscure the composer’s original intentions.

Generally editions which are Urtext (i.e. based on the composer’s manuscripts and first editions of the work) are to be preferred. Publishers such as Henle, Wiener Urtext, Peters Urtext and Bärenreiter produce good Urtext editions of works. A good modern edition should always clarify what are the composer’s original markings (e.g. expression, phrasing, articulation) and what have been added by the editor.

Finding the Music You Need

Selecting editions

Links

Buying music: Ireland

Buying music: Internationally

Libraries