Find Background Informaiton
This is the first place you should search when doing music research. Use it to find background information about your topic, and pay particular attention to the bibliographies at the end of each entry. They can provide you with great sources!
- Oxford Music Online (contains Grove Music Online) This link opens in a new windowOxford Music Online, home of Grove Music Online, the world’s premier online music encyclopedia, offering comprehensive coverage of music, musicians, music-making, and music scholarship. This resource includes: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition, The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2nd edition, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, The Norton Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, The Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2nd edition, The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, 2nd edition, The Oxford Dictionary of Music and The Oxford Companion to Music.
- Oxford Bibliographies This link opens in a new windowDeveloped cooperatively with scholars and librarians worldwide, Oxford Bibliographies offers exclusive, authoritative research guides across a variety of subject areas. Combining the best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia, this cutting-edge resource directs researchers to the best available scholarships. F&M subscribes only to the following subject areas: Cinema and Media Studies, Classics, and Music.
Find Books
Sample searches:
Schubert AND "piano concerto" AND (analysis OR criticism OR interpretation)
Schubert AND (society OR culture OR politics OR philosophy)
"elizabethan melancholy"
Recommended Databases
Use these databases to find articles on your topic as well as music recordings in the classical music library.
- RILM Music Literature Abstracts This link opens in a new windowOver 200,000 citations for music scholarship describing books, articles, and dissertations. Produced by the Repertoire Internationale de Litterature Musicale. Covers 1967 to the present.
- JStor This link opens in a new windowA collection of full-text articles from over 3000 scholarly journals, many dating from the nineteenth-century to the last 4 or 5 years. A growing number of titles are available through the current issues, as part of their "Current Scholarship Program". Select Advanced Search to strategically search amongst 45 disciplines. Choose PDF from within JStor to properly view and print articles. For convenience, JStor is now searchable on Facebook.
- Classical Music Library This link opens in a new windowClassical Music Library offers an impressive classical music collection enabling you to listen to a continually growing collection - currently over 60,000 tracks. This Classical Music Library service is a complete collection of recordings, accompanied by a vast reference database.
- Petrucci Music LibraryThe IMSLP believes that music should be something that is easily accessible for everyone. The ultimate goal of the IMSLP is to gather all public domain music scores, in addition to the music scores of all contemporary composers (or their estates) who wish to release them to the public free of charge.
