Historical editions form part of a category of printed music, which generally consists of classical music and opera from a past repertory, where the term can apply to several different types of published music. However, it is principally applied to one of three types of music of this sort:

• Scholarly or critical editions are music editions in which careful scholarship has been employed to ensure that the music contained within is as close to the composer's original intentions as possible. Such editions are sometimes called urtext editions.
• Collected Works or Complete Works, generally in multi-volume sets, are devoted to a particular composer or to a particular musical repertory. This is sometimes referred to in German as Gesamtausgabe when containing the works of one particular composer.
• Monuments or Monumental Editions (or the German Denkmäler) when containing a repertory defined by geography, time period, or musical genre.