Ask Toscanini!

About

Ask Toscanini! expedites the music score finding process by supporting search queries which pertain to the content and structure of music. Using standard music terminology, musicians can find repertoire relevant to their ensemble's playing needs beyond what is possible with existing commercial engines which tend to operate solely on metadata (title, composer name, genre, etc.). We have written a paper detailing the anatomy of the engine here.

Developer: Arman Bahraini (arman1 at vt.edu)
Supervisor: Dr. Eli Tilevich (tilevich at cs.vt.edu)

Instructions

Suppose you want pieces with flute that plays in range D4 G#6 and viola in C3 E5...

Enter an instrument range query in the search box below as "flute D4 G#6 and viola C3 E5" (without quotes)
Hit the "Toscanini Search" button and we'll show you our matching scores as PDF or MusicXML !

Supported Queries

See all scores we have by leaving the search box empty
Query for an instrument with a specific range, ex: trumpet F#3 D5
Query for composer or instrument (no range), ex: "bach", "viola", etc.
Query for tempo between range, ex: "tempo 40 130"
Query for key signature, ex: "key Bb"
Query for time signature, ex: "ts 2 4"
Query for dynamic (anywhere in the score), ex: "dynamic mf". Currently the supported representations for dynamics are: f, ff, fff, ffff, fffff, ffffff, fp, fz, mf, mp, p, pp, ppp, pppp, ppppp, pppppp, rf, rfz, sf, sffz, sfp, sfpp, sfz
Putting it all together: "Beethoven and tempo 75 150 and flute D4 G#6 and trumpet F#3 A5 and key Bb and ts 2 4 and dynamic mp and dynamic ff"

Side Notes

This engine is not case sensitive
Queries are checked for name inclusion, so querying for "trumpet F3 D5" can give you scores with "Trumpets in C" assuming the range is appropriate

Troubleshooting

Our engine supports syntactic and semantic error checking. What this means is that we try to detect typos or otherwise musically invalid search conditions, so you won't be presented with irrelevant scores. The language of music is of course very intricate and filled with edge cases however. If you feel a search query isn't returning scores correctly, or if you have any other suggestions, please feel free to contact the developer.