Research Guides: Music Research Guide: 1700-present (MUH 2200)

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This page lists resources that will help you with your research in music history from 1700-present. Since we cover citations 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!

This image shows the cover of Salons, Singers and Songs

This image shows the cover of Music in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries

This image shows the cover of Experimental Music Since 1970

Image shows the cover of Analytical Strategies and Musical Interpretation

Image shows the cover of Composing the Canon

Image shows the cover of Music and Decadance in European Modernism

Image shows the cover of The End of Early Music

Image shows the cover of The Great American Symphony

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).
Classical Music Reference Library Classical Music Reference Library is a comprehensive classical music reference database comprising over 47,000 pages of text, including the Baker's series and other texts spannig 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.
Oxford History of Western Music The online edition of Richard Taruskin's book offers an unmatched account of the evolution of Western classical music

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.
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature RILM is a comprehensive music bibliography featuring citations, abstracts, and indexes. Publications originate from 151 countries and are in 214 languages. There are currently over 550,000 records in RILM on traditional music, popular music, and classical music. Coverage of all document types begins in 1967. Coverage of Conference Proceedings goes back to 1835.

Newspaper Articles

New York Times (nytimes.com) To access the library's NYTimes.com subscription, you'll need to sign up for an account using the link above. Choose Create an Account once you've clicked on the link above. We recommend that you use your Belmont email address just in case you ever have trouble with your password. Once you've created your account, you can access NYTimes.com from anywhere, including via the NYTimes mobile apps! Every year, you'll need to log in to your account via the link above while on campus to keep it active.
Historic New York Times (1851-2019) The New York Times (1851-2019) offers full page and article images with searchable full text back to the first issue. The collection includes digital reproductions providing access to every page from every available issue.

Find Scores

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.
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.
Contemporary Music Score Collection This project of the UCLA Music Library includes contemporary music scores to view and download.

Find Audio/Video Recordings

Streaming Audio

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.
American Song American Song is a history database that allows people to hear and feel the music from America's past.The database includes songs by and about American Indians, miners, immigrants, slaves, children, pioneers, and cowboys. Included in the database are the songs of Civil Rights, political campaigns, Prohibition, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, anti-war protests, and more. If you have trouble accessing this resource, please use your browser's "private window" function
DRAM (Database of Recorded American Music) DRAM is a not-for-profit resource providing educational communities with on-demand streaming access to CD-quality audio, complete original liner notes and essays from independent record labels and sound archives. DRAM's ever growing collection contains more than 4,000 albums' worth of recordings from a distinctive set of 42 independent labels. The basis for the current collection is the diverse catalogue of American music recordings by New World Records and CRI labels, which merged in 2007.

Library of Congress National Jukebox The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and other contributing libraries and archives. Recordings in the Jukebox were issued on record labels now owned by Sony Music Entertainment, which has granted the Library of Congress a gratis license to stream acoustical recordings. At launch, the Jukebox includes more than 10,000 recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925.

Naxos Music Library (Jazz) Notable historic recordings (23,000 tracks) include the likes of Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Chet Baker, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, and the Modern Jazz Quartet to name a few. Soul artists like The Blackbyrds, the Staple Singers, Issac Hayes, and Albert King are also featured. On the rock n' roll side of things it features artists like Little Richard, Sam Cooke, the Soul Stirrers Lloyd Price and Creedance Clearwater Revival. Use of this resource is limited to three (3) simultaneous users. If you are unable to access it, please try again later.
Jazz Music Library Jazz Music Library provides coverage in breadth and depth for jazz music, and is essential for music history, jazz appreciation, jazz history, music performance, and African American studies: Definitive audio database of jazz from the early 20s to today, including all major jazz genres including vocal jazz, bebop, acid jazz, big band music, modern jazz, and more. More than 14,000 distinct song titles along with links to all the various versions recorded in Jazz Music Library. Hundreds of distinct instrument categories. More than 200 distinct jazz genres and sub-genres. Data on tens of thousands of artists and ensembles. If you have trouble accessing this resource, please use your browser's "private window" function

Streaming Video

Naxos Video Library The Naxos Video Library is a performing arts video library with over 300 operas, ballets, documentaries, live concerts, and musical tours of historic places. It includes the Naxos DVD label, Opus Arte, Arthaus, Dacapo, EuroArts, among others and is continuously updated to offer the best selection of performing arts videos. Use of this resource is limited to five (5) simultaneous users. If you are unable to access it, please try again later.
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

Citation Tutorial

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