Research Guides: Music Research Guide: Ancient-1700 (MUH 3200)

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This page lists resources that will help you with your research in music history from ancient times to 1700. Since we cover evaluating sources in class, there is also a tutorial in the left-hand column that you can use as a refresher. If you need more information about a source, hover over the 'i' icon, and if you need help contact the Music Librarian!

Image is the cover of Documents of Ancient Greek Music

Image is the cover of Ancient Music Adapted to Modern Practice

Image shows the cover of A History of Baroque Music

This image shows the cover of Music in the Baroque

This image shows the cover of Music of the Baroque

This image shows the cover of The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music

This image shows the cover of The Practice of Medieval Music

This image shows the cover of The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory

This image shows the cover of The Chansons of Orlando di Lasso

This image shows the cover of Music in the Renaissance

This image shows the cover of Josquin des Prez and His Musical Legacy

This image shows the cover of A Performer's Guide to Renaissance Music

Critical Score Editions

Critical score editions are mostly found in the M2 and M3 call number areas of the library. In general, M2s refer to a collected set of scores for a time period, genre, geographical location, or instrument and M3s refer to the collected works of a composer. They are created by experts on a composer’s or place/time period's history and style, and they include text that explains which sources (like a manuscript, correspondence, and early editions of a piece) were used to create the collected works edition and why. These are called critical commentaries or critical reports.

Some helpful critical score editions for this class include:

Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance (M2 .R2382)
Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance (M2 .R2384)
Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque (M2 .R2380)
The English Madrigalist (M2 .F413)
English Lute Songs (M2 .E58)
The London Pianoforte School (M2 .L66)
Tudor Church Music (M2 .T9 1963)
The collected works of Bach, Handel, Haydn, Monteverdi, Lasso, Palestrina, Telemann, and Vivaldi (all in the M3 call number area)

Belmont subscribes to Recent Researches in Music Online, where you can find newer publications in those series:

Recent Researches in Music (RRIMO) Recent Researches in Music Online contains complete content of scores and partbooks with fully serachable text content. Users can read online, print, or save. Includes online access to all titles published in 2018 and later in the seven Recent Researches in Music series: Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, 19th/20th centuries, American (including MUSA), and Oral Traditions.

Guides from The University of Minnesota and Indiana University Bloomington contain more in-depth information about critical score collections. As always, if you need help finding a score contact the Belmont Music Library staff!

Find Articles and Other Sources

General Information

Grove / Oxford Music Online Oxford Music Online is the gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. With Grove Music Online as its cornerstone, Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music (2002), The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 2nd edition (revised 2006), and Colin Larkin's landmark Encyclopedia of Popular Music, 4th edition (2006).

Scholarly Articles

JSTOR Arts & Sciences JSTOR offers high-quality, interdisciplinary content to support scholarship and teaching. It includes leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. Journals are always included from volume 1, issue 1 and include previous and unrelated titles.
Music Periodicals Database (IIMP) Music Periodicals Database (IIMP) provides indexing, abstracting and selected full-text coverage of the most important scholarly and popular music journals published today.

Primary Source Materials

RISM: Repertoire Internationale des Sources Musicales RISM is recognized within the music world as the central place for the documentation of music primary sources. The RISM publications are divided into the following series: Series A: inventories alphabetically by composer Series B: bibliographies of materials organized by topic Series C: directories of music research libraries

Iconography/Scholarly Images

ARTStor A rich digital library that offers collections of art images and descriptive information as well as the software tools to enable active use of the collections.The ARTstor Library's content includes more than one million images covering a wide variety of subject areas, including art, architecture, music, religion, anthropology, literature, world history, American Studies, Asian Studies, Classical Studies, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, and more.

RIdIM: Repertoire International d'Iconographie Musicale A new database project that aims to catalog and classify pieces of iconography relevant to the study of music. It includes images as well as links to the source for each image.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Library of Congress

Find Scores

Naxos Sheet Music Library The FreeHandMusic.com catalogue contains thousands of original scores from the world?s leading publishers, artists and composers, including Oxford University Press, Josef Weinberger, Universal Edition, Chick Corea, Sir James Galway, Joe Lovano, Edizioni Pizzicato, Sikorski Musikverlage, and - as they say - many, many more. Download, transpose, and/or print Legacy Edition sheet music instantly.
Classical Scores Library: Volume I The first volume of Classical Scores Library includes more than 400,000 pages of the most important classical music scores and manuscripts ever written. Students, faculty, and scholars will find countless works from classical musics most studied composers, including Bach, Schubert, Mozart, Handel, Beethoven, Liszt, Brahms, Chopin, plus thousands more. Additional material in Volume I includes 100 scores from the Barry S. Brook Centers collection of French Opera in the 17th and 18th centuries, providing access to the music and libretti of the early operas during an important period in the development of the genre. If you have trouble accessing this resource, please use your browser's "private window" function
Classical Scores Library: Volume II Volume II includes a range of important composers not represented in the first volume and alternative editions of many of musics most studied compositions. Featured composers include Michael Tippett, Hugo Wolf, Claude Debussy, Erik Satie, Gabriel Faur, Maurice Ravel, Charles Ives, Andrew Schultz, Moya Henderson, Nicholas Vines, Giovanni Sammartini, Michael Haydn, Carl Orff, and many others. Classical Scores Library: Volume II also includes all 60 volumes of The Symphony 1720?1840, the largest source of 18th century symphonies comprising 550 symphonic works. If you have trouble accessing this resource, please use your browser's "private window" function

Petrucci Music Library (IMSLP) A community-built library of public domain sheet music. Extensive collection of original scores scanned to PDF.

Find Audio/Video Recordings

Streaming Audio

Classical Music Library Classical Music Library is the world's largest multi-label database of Classical music recordings for listening and learning in libraries. The growing collection of tracks includes recordings from the world's greatest labels including Hyperion, Bridge Records, and many more. Coverage includes music written from the earliest times (e.g. Gregorian Chant) to the present, including many contemporary composers. Repertoire ranges from vocal and choral music, to chamber, orchestral, and more. If you have trouble accessing this resource, please use your browser's "private window" function
Naxos Music Library (Classical) The Naxos Music Library is the most comprehensive collection of music available online, offering the complete Naxos, Marco Polo and Da Capo catalogues, as well as jazz and world music and educational products and full liner notes. Over 75,000 tracks available on campus or at home. Use of this resource is limited to ten (10) simultaneous users. If you are unable to access it, please try again later.

Streaming Video

Classical Music in Video Classical Music in Video provides coverage in breadth and depth for classical music, and is relevant to a broad range of studies, including music history, music appreciation, music performance, analysis, and theory: Musical time periods from Medieval to the twenty-first century. Historical recordings from the 1950s up to the most current recordings today. Performances of all forms of music, including major orchestral performances by leading orchestras, plus chamber music, oratorio, and solo performances. Masterclasses and interviews with master teachers from around the world. Documentaries profiling classical artists and their work. If you have trouble accessing this resource, please use your browser's "private window" function
Opera in Video Opera in Video is a comprehensive collection of operatic performances covering the most commonly studied operas in music history, opera literature, and performance classes. The collection contains 500 hours of video comprising 288 operatic works. If you have trouble accessing this resource, please use your browser's "private window" function
Met Opera on Demand online access to more than 575 full-length Met performances
Swank Streaming Video Streaming access to more than 30 films, representing some of the top choices for Film Studies, including academy award winners and popular general release classics.
Kanopy Works best on Firefox or Chrome. Internet Explorer is no longer supported. provides access to one of the most unique collections of films in the world including award-winning documentaries, training films and theatrical releases on every topic imaginable. More than 15,000 titles are available from off and on-campus via this streaming service.

Music Research Guide

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Critical Score Editions

Find Articles and Other Sources

Find Scores

Find Audio/Video Recordings