Bandoneon Sheet Music

Sheet Music for Bandoneon

A different story is finding sheet music for the bandoneon. Printed scored for bandoneon are quite seldom because of no commercial interest by the involved editors. The other reason is, that the bandoneon was always onsidered not to be a serious instrument so composers preferred to publish their creations as piano scores. As a consequence bandoneonists are used to make their own arrangements transscribing the available piano notes. The few ever published in Argentina or elsewhere where thought mainly for students and are nowadays hard to find as originals.

Bandoneon Solos at SADAIC

Here you can find the list of bandoneon solos registered at SADAIC (Sociedad Argentina de Autores y Compositores de Música).
Most solos for bandoneon are arranged individually, that is, they are not published. As a consequence photocopies of such arrangements are circulating among the musicians.

Non-Tango

There are a few composers known who have published original music for Bandoneon. Mostlty they are classical pieces. An overview is given by Henry Doktorski in the article The Classical Bandoneon

More often there are excerpts for the bandoneon as part of orchestration arrangements. Again, complete orchestration arrangents are now available at the publisher's on-line services.

Fortunately today's bandoneonists do have consistently solid knowledge of music. This favors the creation of arrangements, and many share them with their pupils. As already mentioned, the arrangement of the instrumentation is part of the identity of the orchestra and written individually based on the commercially available basic published material.