African American Music
- Archives of African American Music and Culture
- Provides "access to holdings which include oral histories, photographs, musical and print manuscripts, audio and video recordings, educational broadcast programs, and the personal papers of individuals and organizations concerned with black music."
- African American Sheet Music: 1850-1920
- "The collection includes many songs from the heyday of antebellum black face minstrelsy in the 1850s and from the abolitionist movement of the same period."
- Hiphop Archive
- Includes readings, visuals, listening, and short videos.
- Lift Every Voice and Sing: Music in American Life
- Ballads, hymns, minstrel and protest songs. Includes audio clips and sheet music.
Blues / Jazz
- All About Jazz
- Lists of new releases, CD and book reviews, interviews and more. Not a scholarly resource.
- The Blues
- PBS website to accompany the Martin Scorsese series on the blues. Although you cannot view the videos on the site you can read biographies and other background information about the musicians covered in the series. There is also information on the blues in the section Blues Classroom. The Library does own the series, and you can check them out to view the entire film.
- Now What a Time: Blues, Gospel,and the Fort Valley Music Festival, 1938-1943
- About 100 audio files of blues and gospel music.
- Sheldon Harris Sheet Music Collection
- University of Mississippi collection of early minstrel songs through the 1970's. The University of Mississippi has issued this disclaimer about some of the materials in the collection: " Many of the minstrel songs contained in this digital collection are extremely offensive. However, it is impossible to adequately understand American racial attitudes of the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries, without examining some blatantly racist ideas. Most of the music featured in this collection is not fringe material, but some of the most popular songs of their times." Not all the material is offensive however.
Choral / Vocal
- American Choral Music, 1870-1923
- Collections of the Library of Congress. Provides selected works by eight composers.
Classical
- Baroque Music Homepage
- Essays, information, recommended recordings and links to other web sites.
- Beethoven Haus Digital Archives
- Contains "more than 5,000 documents on 26,000 coloured scans of high quality, 1,600 audio files (music examples, audio letters) and 7,600 text files."
- Classical Music
- From the British Library.
- Classical Net
- "Classical Net features more than 7000 files including more than 5200 CD, SACD, DVD and Book reviews and over 5500 links to other classical music web sites."
- Essentials of Music
- "...basic information about classical music. Created in cooperation with W.W. Norton & Company, it's built around Essential Classics, the series specially designed to introduce you to the best music of every period. All through the site you'll find almost 200 excerpts from Essential Classics. You'll also find: Eras: Overviews of the six main periods in music history -- Middle Ages, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Twentieth Century. Composers: Brief biographies of nearly 70 composers, which will bring to life the artists and their works. Glossary: 200 definitions with numerous musical examples."
- Great Conversations in Music
- You can view videos and read biographies on some of the major composers, performers, and conductors of classical music.
- Hear HERE!: The Royal Philharmonic Society
- Listen to musicians and conductors talk about music. Some musical excerpts included.
- National Gallery of Art
- Music podcasts.
- Neue Mozart-Ausgabe: Digitized Version
- "The purpose of this web site ... is to make Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's musical compositions widely and conveniently accessible to the public, for personal study and for educational and classroom use."
Lyrics / Scores
- Digital Scores and Libretti
- Harvard University's Loeb Music Library's collection of scores and libretti of 18th and early 19th century music.
- First Book of English Madrigals
- Published by John Wilbye in 1598. For four, five, and six voices.
- International Music Score Library Project
- A "virtual library containing all public domain musical scores, as well as scores from composers who are willing to share their music with the world without charge."
- JW Pepper
- A commercial supplier of sheet music that can serve as a sheet music "in print" source.
- Sheet Music Collection
- Digital Sheet Music Project from the University of South Carolina Music Library. Provides access to over 10,000 pieces of classical, popular, and sacred music from the 19th and early 20th centuries. For items in the public domain the actual document has been scanned.
- Sheet Music Consortium
- Searches across multiple collections of sheet music. Some access is restricted, but much is available. Creating a login lets you save your selections as a virtual collection.
- SheetMusicPlus
- Another commercial supplier that can serve as an "in print" source.
- Sibley Music Library Music Score Collection
- Contains over 10,00 digitized pieces of music.
Miscellaneous
- All Music Guide
- All styles of music are included. Includes reviews. biographies, album information, etc.
- American Memory Collections- Performing Arts and Music
- Includes various types of music including classical, African-American, folk and Native American.
- British Library: Archival Sound Recordings
- About 7,000 items are currently available for listening.
- Charles H. Templeton, Sr. Music Museum
- A sheet music collection of almost 22,000 pieces from 1865 to more recent times. Includes ragtime, blues, movie tunes, foxtrots, popular music, show tunes, Irving Berlin, war songs and specialty. More recent items may not be digitized due to copyright restrictions.
- Dewey Music
- Dewey Music is an interface for the Internet Archive's public domain music library.
- Great Performances
- "GREAT PERFORMANCES presents a diverse programming portfolio of classical music, opera, popular song, musical theater, dance, drama, and performance documentaries."
- Maine Music Box
- The Maine Music Box has two parts. One has musical scores, midi files, and Sibelius Scorch files. The other is for instructors. Vocal popular music as well violin and piano scores are included.
- National Jukebox
- "...makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives."
- NPR Music
- Concerts, studio sessions, interviews, columns, among other offerings.
- The Orchestra, a User's Manual
- Provides information about the orchestra, orchestration, composition and instruments.
- Public Domain Music
- Music no longer covered by copyright in the United States. Recordings are covered by separate copyright conditions.
- WWW Sites of Interest to Musicologists
- American Musicological Society site that offers a gateway to sites ranging from music history to job sited for musicians.
Musical Instruments
- Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Instruments
- Short explanations, pictures, and recordings of musical instruments.
- Virtual Instrument Museum
- Audio, video, pictures, and media.
Opera/Operetta
- Ballad Operas Online
- Ballad operas were performed on the British stage between 1728 to 1760. They combined a comic or sentimental play with musical numbers. Publication and production information may be found here along with some audio samples.
- Gilbert and Sullivan Archive
- The Metropolitan Opera
- Offers a history of the Met, brief audio segments of famous performances, and brief summaries of operas.
- OperaGlass
- Synopsis, full or part libretto, performance history and other information is provided.
- World of Opera
- World of Opera with host Lisa Simeone brings listeners compelling performances from top American and international opera companies. World of Opera encompasses the seminal operas of the 17th century; the comic, political and social satires of the 18th century; the "bel canto" masterpieces of Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini; the revolutionary 19th-century works of Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner; and, of course, operas in the "true-to-life" verismo style of Puccini and Mascagni.
Orchestra
- Boston Symphony Orchestra's Online Conservatory
- A look at the symphony orchestra with interactive tools.
Popular Music
- Billboard
- News site for current music.
- HipHop Archive
- Contains both popular and academic information about Hip Hop.
Reference Works
- Encyclopedia of Music in Canada
- Includes information on the music of Canada's ethnic populations as well as articles on musical terms and history.
- Performing Arts Encyclopedia
- From the Library of Congress collections. American music including sheet music, choral song, audio files, and a wealth of other information.
World, Ethnic, and Folk Music
- Africa Focus, Sights and Sounds of a Continent (P)
- "This collection contains more than 3000 slides, 500 photographs, 50 hours of sounds from forty-five different countries, as well as a large number of difficult to find texts that librarians, scholars, and other subject specialists have deemed important to these fields of study."
- Global Music Archive
- "The Global Music Archive is a multi-media reference archive and resource center for traditional and popular song, music, and dance of Africa and the Americas."
- Music and Dance of Africa
- A collection of links brought together by Columbia University Libraries. Includes text links, as well as sound and video.
- National Geographic World Music
- Search by region, artist, or genre. The site includes information, as well as some music and video downloads.
- Sephardic Music: A Century of Recordings
- Over 100 years of Sephardic music.
- Smithsonian Folkways
- Users can search the entire collection of Smithsonian Folkways recordings and download liner notes. The actual music is available through Music Online. You will need a library card to access the music. In addition to the recordings, Smithsonian Folkways has a selection of podcasts and short videos, as well as radio strams.
- South African Voices
- "South African Voices is a three-volume work that includes: A Long Time Passed, Created in Olden Times, and The Way We Travelled: Oral History and Poetry." Includes audio files.
- Southern Folklife Collection
- Several genres of music are represented:old-time music; country and bluegrass; folk revival; rhythm, blues, and boogie; African-American, and an eclectic mix.
- World and Traditional Music
- From the British Library. Includes recordings from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australasia, and South Asia.
Marianne Berger, Reference Librarian
630-942-2338
berger@cod.edu
January 2010
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