Subject Librarian
Research Guides
If you need an overall guide to how to research vocal music, these tools are all great, depending on your specific need. They can lead you to other books about your song/topic. There are also many similar guides for individual composers. Ask the librarian if you need help getting started with research.
The Madrigal: A Research and Information Guide by Call Number: Available ONLINEISBN: 9780415801027Publication Date: 2011The Madrigal: A Research and Information Guide is the first comprehensive annotated bibliography of scholarship on virtually all aspects of madrigal composition, production, and consumption. It contains 1,237 entries for items in English, French, German, and Italian. Scholars, students, teachers, librarians, and performers now have access to this rich literature in a single volume.
Choral Music: A Research and Information Guide by Call Number: Available ONLINEISBN: 0367729261Publication Date: 2019This is an annotated bibliography to books, recordings, videos, and websites on choral music. This book will serve as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars in sorting through the massive amount of new material that has appeared since publication of the previous edition.
The Musical: A Research and Information Guide by Call Number: Available ONLINEISBN: 1135848076Publication Date: 2011The musical, whether on stage or screen, is undoubtedly one of the most recognizable musical genres, yet one of the most perplexing. What are its defining features? How does it negotiate multiple socio-cultural-economic spaces? Is it a popular tradition? Is it a commercial enterprise? Is it a sophisticated cultural product and signifier? This research guide includes more than 1,400 annotated entries related to the genre as it appears on stage and screen. It includes reference works, monographs, articles, anthologies, and websites related to the musical. Separate sections are devoted to sub-genres (such as operetta and megamusical), non-English language musical genres in the U.S., traditions outside the U.S., individual shows, creators, performers, and performance. The second edition reflects the notable increase in musical theater scholarship since 2000. In addition to printed materials, it includes multimedia and electronic resources.
Opera: A Research and Information Guide by Call Number: Ref. ML 128 .O4 M28 2001ISBN: 0815335164Publication Date: 2000Opera is the only guide to the research writings on all aspects of opera. This second edition presents 2,833 titles--over 2,000 more than the first edition--of books, parts of books, articles and dissertations with full bibliographic descriptions and critical annotations. Users will find the core literature on the operas of 320 individual composers and details of operatic life in 43 countries. All relevant works through to November 1999 have been considered, covering more than fifteen years of literature since the first edition was published.
Find Background Information: Online Reference Sources
Reference sources help establish basic information, such as the definition of an unfamiliar music term or the dates of a composer's life. These are not generally considered scholarly sources (with the exception of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music) and do not necessarily need to be cited or quoted from in research papers or projects.
- Baker's Biographical Dictionary of MusiciansThe six volumes of the 9th edition (2001) of this major reference source are available online as a component of the Classical Music Reference Library database. Includes biographical entries on classical composers and musicians, as well as increased coverage of jazz and popular musicians from previous editions.
- Garland Encyclopedia of World Music (Music Online) This link opens in a new windowComprehensive online resource devoted to music research of all the world’s peoples. Contains hundreds of articles about the music of every continent. Includes the searchable full-text of the ten-volume print encyclopedia ; associated audio examples ; musical illustrations, photographs, and drawings ; song texts and score examples ; charts and maps of world regions
- Grove Music Online This link opens in a new windowA comprehensive compendium of music scholarship offering the full texts of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition (2001), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (1992), and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2nd edition (2002), as well as numerous subsequent updates and emendations. Including more than 50,000 signed articles and 30,000 biographies contributed by over 6,000 scholars from around the world, Grove Music Online is the unsurpassed authority on all aspects of music. Grove Music Online is accessed via the Oxford Music Online portal where it can be cross-searched with The Oxford Dictionary of Music.
- Harvard Dictionary of MusicThe best known quick reference source of musical terminology.Short entry defininations alternate with some essay-length articles on historical periods, styles, and key concepts.
- Oxford Companion to MusicNewly revised for an online-only edition in 2011, this resource includes new and updated biographies, with a particular emphasis on contemporary composers; new terms; and improved cross-referencing. In articles that range from clear, concise definitions of musical ideas and terms to extended surveys of musical forms and styles, the Companion features authoritative coverage of virtually every musical subject. The Oxford Companion to Music is accessed via the Oxford Music Online portal where it can be cross-searched with Grove Music Online and The Oxford Dictionary of Music.
- Oxford Dictionary of Musiccontains 5,000 entries on composers, most of which include up-to-date work-lists, performers, individual works, musical terms, forms and styles, instruments, as well as general themes such as musicology, acoustics, and absolute pitch, and historical periods such as the Byzantine era. The Oxford Dictionary of Music is accessed via the Oxford Music Online portal where it can be cross-searched with Grove Music Online and The Oxford Companion to Music.
- Classical Music Reference Library (Music Online) This link opens in a new windowTexts span the entire history of Western classical music from the Medieval period to the 21st century including coverage of all classical genres, definitions of musical terms, and biographical information on the major composers and artists. The collection provides coverage of a wide range of material types, including biographies, chronologies, primary source readings, and critical texts. Features online version of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Centennial Edition (9th), 2001.
- African American Music Reference (Music Online) This link opens in a new windowAfrican American Music Reference will contain 50,000 pages of text and 17,000 pages of liner notes that offers the first comprehensive coverage of blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, gospel, and other forms of black American musical expression.