By Nate Anderson
May 21, 2008 - 10:50PM CT

Pre-twentieth century music all exists in the public domain, but that doesn't mean it's easy to get access either to recordings or sheet music. Want to include a Beethoven sonata as background music in your wedding video, documentary, or indie feature film?

You'll need to pay unless you can dig up an ancient recorded copy from the early 1900s (and can live with the sound quality). Want to pass out sheet music of that same sonata to your high school band? Again, you will need to pay unless you can track down an ancient, out-of-copyright score. One web site has the ambitious goal of doing away with such restrictions, putting both classical recordings and sheet music into the public domain for use by anyone in the world.

Musopen has been around for a couple of years but has recently rolled out a new version of its web site, added freely-downloadable sheet music, and raised enough cash to professionally record the entire set of 32 Beethoven piano sonatas and place them in the public domain. One of the site's innovative features is its bidding system, in which users can pledge contributions toward specific pieces. When they necessary amount is raised, a professional musician is hired to perform, say, Bach's Goldberg Variations (currently the top request).

Most of the money used to fund the Beethoven Sonatas was also raised from users in small increments, with a $5 average contribution. While individuals can spend that same money purchasing their own copies of such works, a donation to Musopen helps fund a musical commons that makes the pieces available worldwide and for any application. Aaron Dunn, who started the project while in college, tells Ars that big projects are in the works for the site, including deals with the Internet Archive and the OLPC project.