The Etude magazine was established in 1883 by Theodore Presser with $250 saved from his income as a music teacher. The subsequent history of the magazine and the Theodore Presser Company is one of the great entrepreneurial success stories of American music. The Etude remains one of the longest-lived music magazines in American history and is still a ubiquitous presence in flea markets and online auctions.

In the early years, each issue published roughly five or six musical scores, but by the 1930's there were upwards of twenty compositions published each month. The resulting list of repertoire comprises well over 10,000 musical compositions in an eclectic range of styles and difficulty levels. The major composers of Western art music appear side by side with a broad range of popular composers, including a strong representation of American and female composers.

This rich resource has never been indexed and has thus been virtually inaccessible to scholars and performers, who now have access to three quarters of a century of music in this valuable repository of scores.