Music

Major Research Tools

Database of American roots music, including country, folk, bluegrass, Western, old time, American Indian, blues, gospel, and shape note singing. Songs are categorized by historical event as well as musicians, genres, etc.

Database of classical music plus biographical information on composers.

Audio collection of music from around the world. Includes reggae, worldbeat, Indian classical, flamenco, klezmer, zydeco, gospel, and more.

Audio collection covering all types of jazz.

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Searchable archive of the back issues of scholarly journals, plus current subscriptions to 44 titles. The most recent 3-5 years of most journals are not included in JSTOR.

Interface for simultaneously searching four of Skillman's music listening databases: American Song, Classical Music Library, Contemporary World Music, and Jazz Music Library.

Audio collection covering classical, jazz, and world music, with particular strength in 20th and 21st century composers. Users can create playlists. Users who download the free NML iPhone app can listen to their playlists remotely.

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Authoritative reference works on music, including Grove Music Online.

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Collection of dictionaries on music from Oxford University Press.

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Coverage: 1967-present

Indexes the scholarly literature of music from Amadeus to Zevon.

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Rock reviews, articles and interviews from the 1960s to the present.

Music from the Smithsonian Folkways collection and from other music archives around the world. Strong in American folk and other "roots" music. Includes spoken word recordings, such as poets reading their works.

Other Suggested Research Tools

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A collection of stock arrangements for bands or small orchestras of popular songs written by African Americans. Also includes digitized sets of parts and pre-1923 recordings for selected arrangements, songs, and composers.

Database of recorded music. Includes discographies, some biographies, essays, genre guides, and music "maps" (genre timelines delineated by key artists).

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Digital archive of sheet music for popular American songs published from 1885 to 1953.

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Indexes information on arias from over 170 operas, with original texts, translations, and MIDI files.

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Digital collection of musical and spoken cylinder recordings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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An electronic version of the print compilation (Skillman Ref. ML128.I65 B3) which identfies a musical theme by the first few notes. Searchable by composer, category of music, or by note, it plays and identifies the first few measures of a theme. Quicktime is required.

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Index to recorded folk music, searchable by title keyword and performer. Related and alternate titles and melodies are cross-referenced.

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Encyclopedia of GLBT art, literature, film, music, and popular culture.

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A searchable archive of reviews of classical music recordings in Gramophone Magazine from 1923 to the present. Requires free registration.

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Coverage: 1907-1984

Index of major journals in the humanities and social sciences

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Large repository of free classical music scores.

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Official archival database for Broadway theatre information from the League of American Theatres and Producers. Provides records of productions from the beginnings of New York theatre to present. Includes playwright, opening night cast, theater, performance statistics.

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English translations of the vocal works of J.S. Bach with background information on the literary sources and performance history of each work.

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Articles, music criticism, and interviews with jazz personalities and others recalling the jazz culture of Chicago's South Side, also called Bronzeville.

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An extensive listing of Web resources about Jewish music.

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An archive of texts of Lieder and other art songs, searchable by composer, poet, first line, title, or language. Also includes translations.

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Information on all performances of the Metropolitan Opera from it's opening in 1883 to the present.

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A history of musical theater.

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Collection of several hundred classical music scores in various text formats. Browse by composer, instrument, or musical style or search by keyword.

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Database of information on opera, including synopses, libretti, source texts, performance histories, discographies, and reviews. Provides information on composers, librettists, and opera companies and links to other opera Web sites.

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Collection of primary and secondary materials related to the development of jazz from 1895 to 1929. Features more than 200 sound files of jazz recordings along with biographical essays, band histories, discographies, filmographies, and photographs.

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Digitized sheet music from a consortium of libraries including the Library of Congress, UCLA, Indiana University, Duke University, and Johns Hopkins University.

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Provides discographic information on commercially-released show music recordings from the late 19th century to the present.

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Large and growing collection of digitized music scores from the Eastman School of Music's Sibley Library, the largest academic music library in North America, with an emphasis on scores not widely held or digitized elsewhere.

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Wesleyan University's collection of images and audio and video clips of musical instruments from around the world.