James Fuld, who died Tuesday at 91, compiled what is generally reckoned as among the finest collections of sheet music in private hands.

A one-time piano band leader aboard ocean liners, who later became a corporate lawyer, Fuld’s collection included first editions of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations,” Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” and Gershwin’s “The Man I Love” — signed by the composer and with a rare error in the title: “The Man I Loved.”

An equal-opportunity devotee of Western music, he collected classical and popular music alike, though his enthusiasm seemed to peter out shortly after the era of classic American musicals. His collection of more than 10,000 items is slated to be sold to the Morgan Library and Museum, where many items have been on display in recent years.

Fuld was born February 16, 1912, in Manhattan, the son of a lace importer. He got his start as a collector while a 13-year-old student at the Horace Mann School, buying the sheet music to popular Gershwin and Cole Porter tunes for a quarter each. In a 2004 interview, he told The New York Sun that when he was 17 he introduced himself to a startled Irving Berlin, who signed the music for 35 of his songs that Fuld had collected. He later acquired the words to “God Bless America” in Berlin’s own hand. Fuld did his undergraduate work at Harvard, where he was captain of the tennis team. During summer breaks he played piano in a band in exchange for passage across the Atlantic in ocean liners. He later attended Harvard Law School, where he was editor of the Law Review in 1939–1940. After graduation, he found work at the Manhattan firm of Proskauer Rose Goetz & Mendelsohn, where he eventually became managing partner. He served in the Pacific during World War II, leaving the Army as a major. He kept up his interest in Tin Pan Alley.

“There would be a show by Gershwin, Kern, Rogers, Porter, Berlin every year. Almost every year I would buy the music,” he told the CBS show Sunday Morning in 1995. “I started innocently.”

By the late 1950s, he had begun collecting classical music as well. He trolled music shops in New York and Europe. In the 2004 Sun interview, he recalled that he found his greatest bargain while going through loose sheets in a store on Paris’s Left Bank. It was the first printing of a very early Mozart work “with an obsequious inscription to the queen.” He paid $10. Other gems included first editions of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite, and Wagner’s piano-vocal score for “Die Meistersinger” with Wagner’s penciled-in corrections. In recent years, prices of old sheet music went up, and Fuld turned more to collecting other musical ephemera, including old tickets and music programs. He had a collection of more than 1,000 autographs, including a letter by Handel said to be worth several hundred thousand dollars.

Fuld published several books, including “American Popular Music” (1955) and reproductions of Stephen Foster first editions (1957). “The Book of World-Famous Music” was first published in 1965 and went through five editions. In it, he displayed skills as a musical detective, tracing the publishing history of “Three Blind Mice” to 1609 and “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” to 1774. Eager to increase his learning after his 1998 retirement, he took classes at Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music.

Speaking of his drive to collect, he said in the CBS interview, “I must say, primarily, the appeal to me is just the fun of owning a first printing. Sometimes listening to the radio, following with the original score, and I can pretend I’m there on opening night and trying to evaluate it. It’s very exciting.” In addition to the thousands of items in his collection, Fuld leaves behind his widow, the former Elaine Gerstley, and two daughters, a son, and six grandchildren.