LibGuides: Music: Encyclopedias, Reference, and Tools

Commonly used resources in music reference:

Grove Music Online This link opens in a new window The world’s premier scholarly music encyclopedia, offering comprehensive coverage of music, musicians, music-making, and music scholarship. Provides full-text entries written by music subject experts. Terms of Use. Restricted to 3 users at a time.
Classical Music Reference Library This link opens in a new window More than 30,000 pages of essential definitions of musical terms and biographical information on the major classical composers and artists from Baker’s Music Dictionaries and Encyclopedias. Terms of Use.
Garland Encyclopedia of World Music This link opens in a new window A digital version of the ten-volume encyclopedia, considered an authoritative source on world music and ethnomusicology. More than 9,000 pages with entries by more than 700 expert contributors. Terms of Use.
IPA Source This link opens in a new window International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions and literal translations of musical texts, including opera arias and art songs. Includes Latin, Italian, German, French, Spanish, and English. Terms of Use.
Oxford Music Online This link opens in a new window Cross-search Grove Music Online, the Oxford Companion to Music, and the Oxford Dictionary of Music. Terms of Use. Restricted to 3 users at a time.
Oxford Dictionary of Music This link opens in a new window An essential and widely trusted reference work. Provides brief descriptions on a wide range of musical subjects, including conductors, performers, operas, orchestras, concert halls, and many others. Terms of Use. Restricted to 3 users at a time.

African American Music Reference This link opens in a new window Over 50,000 pages of text reference, biographies, chronologies, sheet music, images, lyrics, liner notes, and discographies which chronicle the diverse history and culture of the African American experience through music. Terms of Use.

Includes over 3,900 pages of reference, including a comprehensive set of biographies on the top 185 African American composers, as well as 5,000 pages of liner notes from Document Records. Other materials include African American iconography, collections of spirituals and slave lyrics, and reference on important ensembles and musicians. Alexander Street Press product.

Classical Music Reference Library This link opens in a new window More than 30,000 pages of essential definitions of musical terms and biographical information on the major classical composers and artists from Baker’s Music Dictionaries and Encyclopedias. Terms of Use.

This resource brings together materials such as definitions of musical terms and biographical information on the major classical composers and artists. Included are the authoritative reference titles Baker's Dictionary of Music, Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, and Baker's Student Encyclopedia of Music. Alexander Street Press product.

Garland Encyclopedia of World Music This link opens in a new window A digital version of the ten-volume encyclopedia, considered an authoritative source on world music and ethnomusicology. More than 9,000 pages with entries by more than 700 expert contributors. Terms of Use.

The Garland Encyclopedia has long been the definitive resouce for ethnomusicological information, even though its print format can be somewhat difficult to navigate. Thankfully, this has been solved with this easily searched electronic version. Alexander Street Press product.

Grove Music Online This link opens in a new window The world’s premier scholarly music encyclopedia, offering comprehensive coverage of music, musicians, music-making, and music scholarship. Provides full-text entries written by music subject experts. Terms of Use. Restricted to 3 users at a time.

When just beginning research on a new project you will almost always want to start with Grove Music Online. This articles are written by music scholars and have extensive information in the "Works" lists.

Music Online This link opens in a new window Cross-search music and dance sources from Alexander Street Press, including Classical Music Library, Classical Scores Library, Jazz Music Library, Dance in Video, and more. Terms of Use.

This site allows the user to search ten different Alexander Street Press databases at the same time and includes resources such as music reference materials, streaming video, streaming sounds, and sheet music.

Oxford Companion to Music This link opens in a new window Offers in-depth coverage of music topics in artistic, historical, cultural, and social settings. More than 8,000 articles, including composers, performers, notation, music theory, and more. Terms of Use. Restricted to 3 users at a time.
Oxford Dictionary of Music This link opens in a new window An essential and widely trusted reference work. Provides brief descriptions on a wide range of musical subjects, including conductors, performers, operas, orchestras, concert halls, and many others. Terms of Use. Restricted to 3 users at a time.
Oxford Music Online This link opens in a new window Cross-search Grove Music Online, the Oxford Companion to Music, and the Oxford Dictionary of Music. Terms of Use. Restricted to 3 users at a time.

Music-specific information tools:

IPA Source This link opens in a new window International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions and literal translations of musical texts, including opera arias and art songs. Includes Latin, Italian, German, French, Spanish, and English. Terms of Use.
Acland's Video Atlas of Human Anatomy This link opens in a new window An anatomical teaching tool that provides an understanding of the real human body and the mechanics of body movement through direct video recordings of real human anatomic specimens.Terms of Use.

Online Music Tools and Public Domain Music Reference Books

These tools can help you to find manuscripts, look up terms in other languages, and find sources for musical themes:

RISM (Répertoire International des Sources Musicales, a.k.a. International Inventory of Musical Sources) A database of musical sources from around the world. Use it to locate manuscripts by individual composers, printed music from 1600 – 1800, and anthologies issued between 1500 and 1550.
ThemeFinder An open access searchable thematic catalog that contains about 35,000 incipits forclassical, folk, and Renaissance music. Produced by the Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities (CCARH) at Stanford University and the Cognitive and Systematic Musicology Laboratory at the Ohio State University.
Terminorum Musicae Index Septem Linguis Redactus (Polyglot Dictionary of Musical Terms) A digitized version of this book is available in full text through Archive.org. This index is useful in looking up musical terms in any of the seven languages indexed (English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, and Russian) to find a translation.

Online Music Reference Books and Scores:

The Notation of Polyphonic Music The Notation of Polyphonic Music by Willi Apel. - Digitized edition of this important text. Now in the public domain.
Mozart - Digital Mozart Edition is produced by the Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg in cooperation with Packard Humanities Institute in Los Altos, California. This fantastic resource provides access to: digitized Letters and Documents of W.A. Mozart and his family; the complete digitized collection of the Neue Mozart Ausgabe (the new complete works of Mozart); and a digital critical edition of libretti for Mozart's operas.

Digital Archives

Tools to search music archives:

Digital Resources for Musicology (DRM) A valuable new tool for music research. It provides links to open-access resources such as digitized music manuscripts, digitized score reprints, early newspapers, historical audio, images, and more.
Online Resources for Music Scholars provides "Links for research on a wide variety of topics in music, including historical musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, composition, and performance practice."