LibGuides: Music History: Home

Getting Started

These resources are useful starting points for researching topics related to art music and music history including information on composers, specific works, musical genres, instruments, etc.

Oxford Music Online This link opens in a new window
Includes The Encylopedia of Popular Music, Grove Music Online, Oxford Companion to Music and Oxford Dictionary of Music.
Biography Reference Bank This link opens in a new window
Contains biographical full text articles, page images and abstracts from today’s leading magazines and journals—providing the most current coverage of an individual’s life and work.
Biography Reference Source This link opens in a new window
A collection of more than 461,000 full-text biographies. Find biographies of interest by searching or browsing 30+ genre categories, including actors, authors, composers, explorers, figures relevant to U.S. & world history, inventors, musicians, Presidents of the United States, current world leaders and many others.
Cambridge Histories This link opens in a new window
ebooks in history, literature, music, philosophy, religion, theatre, and other areas of the humanities.
http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/histories/
Oxford Scholarship Online This link opens in a new window
Access 16,000+ academic works from Oxford University Press, covering subjects across the humanities, social sciences, sciences, medicine, and law.
Virtual Reference Library This link opens in a new window

Find Books, E-Books, & Video

Millersville University Library Catalog This link opens in a new window
Search for printed and electronic books in our library catalog!
EBSCOHost ebooks This link opens in a new window
Over 20,000 fully accessible books on topics ranging from acting to zoology and everything in between!

Find Journal Articles

Music Index This link opens in a new window
Music Index is a comprehensive guide to music periodicals. It is especially useful for finding academic journal articles. Includes both full-text materials and links to items that can be requested from other libraries.
Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Historical Abstracts covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) focusing on the 15th century forward, including world history, military history, women's history, and history of education. Provides indexing of 3,100+ academic historical journals in over 40 languages back to 1955.
JSTOR Journal Archive This link opens in a new window
A full-text archive of over 1,000 of the best scholarly journals in the social sciences, humanities, mathematics, life sciences, etc. Full-text is available from the first issue, but does not include the most recent 2-5 years.
Project Muse This link opens in a new window
Full-text of 300+ peer-reviewed journals. Covers literature, history, the arts, culture, education, political science, gender studies, etc.
Academic Search Ultimate This link opens in a new window
Full-text access to thousands of popular and scholarly sources. A "goto" database for any subject.
America History & Life This link opens in a new window
Historical coverage of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present.
Readers Guide Retrospective ( 1890 - 1982 ) This link opens in a new window
Readers’ Guide Retrospective covers the popular press and offers full coverage of the original paper volumes for nearly 100 years.

Find Translations

International Phonetic Alphabet transcriptions ( aka IPA Source ) This link opens in a new window
IPA Source is a library of International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions and literal translations of opera arias and art song texts.

Find Newspaper Articles

Newspapers can be great for finding primary source material related to music of the 19th, 20th, and 21st Centuries, including reviews and other commentary.

LA Times ( 1985 - Present ) This link opens in a new window
Good for information about more current events since MU has access to issues going back to 1985.
Newspaper Source This link opens in a new window
Access the full-text for more than 400 newspapers and other sources. Includes: USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Times (London); plus transcripts from CNN, National Public Radio, CBS News, Fox News, CNBC, etc.

Listen to Music

American Music Center, New Music Online Library
New Music Online Library is a searchable database that provides on-demand access to digital scores, sound files and biographical information on composers.
National Jukebox
Historical sound recordings from the Library of Congress.
The Great 78 Project
The Great 78 Project is a community project for the preservation, research and discovery of 78rpm records. From about 1898 to the 1950s, an estimated 3 million sides (~3 minute recordings) have been made on 78rpm discs. While the commercially viable recordings will have been restored or remastered onto LP’s or CD, there is still research value in the artifacts and usage evidence in the often rare 78rpm discs and recordings. Already, over 20 collections have been selected by the Internet Archive for physical and digital preservation and access. Started by many volunteer collectors, these new collections have been selected, digitized and preserved by the Internet Archive, George Blood LP, and the Archive of Contemporary Music.