Music: Internet Resources
Free Internet Resources for Music
- The Aria DatabaseThe Aria Database is a collection of information about opera and operatic arias.
Besides providing basic information about each aria, the Database includes translations for many arias and aria texts for those that are not affected by copyright restrictions. The Database also provides access to a collection of operatic sound files to give visitors an idea of what each aria sounds like. In addition, the Aria Database contains information on available scores and sound files that can be purchased to aid in study and enjoyment. Currently, the Database holds information on the complete operatic aria collections of Mozart, Verdi, Berlioz, Wagner, and Puccini as well as the partial collections of over 50 other composers. - Bodleian Library Broadside BalladsThe Bodleian Library has unparalleled holdings of over 30,000 ballads in several major collections. The original printed materials range from the 16th- to the 20th-Century. The Broadside Ballads project makes the digitised copies of the sheets and ballads available to the research community
- Choral Public Domain LibraryFounded in December 1998, CPDL was ported to ChoralWiki in August 2005.
Here you will find free choral/vocal scores, texts, translations, and other useful information. - Classical NetClassical Net features more than 9000 pages and 20,000+ images including more than 7000 CD, SACD, DVD, Blu-ray, Book and Concert reviews and over 5500 links to other classical music web sites.
- DIAMM (the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music)A leading resource for the study of medieval manuscripts. We present images and metadata for thousands of manuscripts on this website. We also provide a home for scholarly resources and editions, undertake digital restoration of damaged manuscripts and documents, publish high-quality facsimiles, and offer our expertise as consultants.
- Doctoral Dissertations in MusicologyAn international database of bibliographic records for completed dissertations and new dissertation topics in the fields of musicology, music theory, and ethnomusicology, as well as in related musical, scientific, and humanistic disciplines. Currently containing over 14,000 records, including the corrected and updated contents of all earlier printed editions of Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology and supplements contributed from musicological centers throughout the world, the database is fully searchable.
- Duke University Library Sheet Music ProjectProvides links to Sheet Music from 1853-1920.
- Early Music SourcesA useful website for accessing a range of resources relating to music in the 15th - 20th Century. Includes a series of YouTube lectures on different topics relating to early music
- Electronic Dictionary of Musical ThemesBy special arrangement with Crown Publishers, The Multimedia Library provides music lovers, music students, and musicologists with a unique new resource — the Dictionary of Musical Themes by Barlow and Morgenstern, now available as Standard MIDI files for computer-based enjoyment, study and analysis.
This collection of 9,825 musical themes (the works of over 150 composers) from the Barlow-Morgenstern original compilation can be played in any browser using Quicktime. You can search by composer, by category of music or by note (solfeggio) in key-independent fashion. - Folk Song IndexAn index to traditional folk songs of the world with an emphasis on English-language songs. Each entry includes the song title, first line of chorus, first line of verse, and full bibliographic information on the source. The index contains over 62,000 entries, and, to date indexes over 2,400 anthologies.
- Glasgow University Broadside Ballad websiteThis website is based around a collection of nineteenth-century broadside ballads that were either printed or sold in Glasgow, and which were collected by the Glaswegian solicitor David Murray. They now form part of the Murray Collection in Glasgow University Library Special Collections, who have kindly given permission to reproduce them. The main element of the website is an index of more than 350 of these broadsides.
- Gramophone ArchiveGramophone Magazine archive. An authority on classical music since 1923.
- International Music Score Library Project - Archive onlyIMSLP stands for International Music Score Library Project. The logo is a capital letter A, taken from the very first press-printed book of polyphonic music, the Harmonice Musices Odhecaton, published in 1501. Its printer, Ottaviano Petrucci, is this library's namesake.
67,396 works · 238,255 scores · 24,052 recordings · 7,694 composers · 227 performers - Internet Archive (Audio)This library contains over two hundred thousand free digital recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users. Many of these audios and MP3s are available for free download.
- Library of Congress National JukeboxThe 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 Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives.
- Music Theory OnlineMTO - Music Theory Online, a Journal of Criticism, is the refereed, electronic journal of the Society for Music Theory. Published several times each year, each volume of MTO includes features such as articles, reviews, commentaries, and analytical essays. In addition, MTO publishes a list of job opportunities and abstracts of recently completed dissertations.
- Music Web InternationalMusicweb International was founded by Dr Len Mullenger in 1995, as a website for the William Alwyn Society, and hosted on the servers of the University of Coventry. From these humble beginnings, it has developed, purely on a volunteer basis, into the largest non-commercial classical music resource on the web
- Public Domain Music (US)Music and lyrics published in 1922 or earlier are in the Public Domain in the United States. No one can claim ownership of a song in the public domain, therefore public domain songs may be used by anyone. Music recordings, however, are copyright protected separately from musical compositions. There are no sound recordings in the Public Domain in the USA.
- RISM Online Catalogue of Musical SourcesA new music catalogue has been available online free of charge since June 2010. The catalogue was made possible through cooperation between RISM, the Bavarian State Library (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) and the State Library of Berlin (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin).
- Scottish Music CentreFor 40 years, its extraordinary archive of both written scores and recorded sound, has collected the world's best array of Scottish music. More than 30,000 items range from 18th century song sheets through modern classics to the latest indie releases on CD and MP3.
But in its anniversary year, the SMC is much more than just a library. It is a key player in developing Scottish talent both locally and internationally. Training sessions and outreach programmes, Scotland's best online news and jobs service for the music industry, and a whole range of essential services, from publicity to website design, printing, digital scoring and recording. - Sheet Music ConsortiumThe Sheet Music Consortium provides tools and services that promote access to and use of online sheet music collections by scholars, students, and the general public.
- Televised Opera and Musical Comedy DatabaseDeveloped in association with the Indiana University Digital Library Program, the Televised Opera and Musical Comedy Database documents more than a half-century of opera, operetta, and musical comedy telecasts produced in the United States. The database traces performance programming from early live presentations on experimental TV stations to current productions released on broadcast and closed circuit television, various cable forms, webcasts and home video.
- The UCal English Broadside Ballad websiteBroadside ballads of the seventeenth century fully accessible as texts, art, music, and cultural records.
- Virtual Library of MusicologyViFaMusik, the central portal for music and musicology, allows you to access an extensive digital library containing the latest scholarly research and online resources. Using a single search engine you can find bibliographical data, full text data, and information about experts in musicology. ViFaMusik is “work in progress” and is continuously being extended.
- World War I Sheet MusicThe World War I digital sheet music collection is drawn from the Sheet Music Collection at the John Hay Library (Brown University). It is composed of over 1,800 titles that relate in some way to the events of World War I, and the impact of that war on American society. There are patriotic songs, songs relating to specific military units, romantic songs of love and loss, comic songs, and songs that look to the war’s end.
- Yale Journal of MusicThe journal of the Yale Institue of Sacred Music which covers study of sacred music in all its ritual, artistic, and cultural contexts.
Reference Collections
The Library's printed Reference Collection is on Level 4, and a wide range of language dictionaries is available on each Level. Please note, however, that many additional Reference publications can be found in our electronic collections.
An important Reference work for music scholars is the Repertoire internationale des sources musicales, located in our reference Section at Ref Z6811.R4.
The RISM documents printed and manuscript music before the year 1800. The project is divided into three subseries: A = Inventories of musical sources from 1600-1800 , in manuscript and printed editions, organized by composer. B = Bibliographies of materials organized by particular topic. C= Directories of music libraries around the world. Series A II, Music Manuscripts after 1600, can be searched freely online.
- CREDO Reference Collection366 major reference works, including dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauri, books of quotations, atlases etc.
- Oxford ReferenceHuge range of fully-indexed, extensively linked dictionary and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press.
- Who's Who and Who Was Who This link opens in a new windowDirectory of over 100,000 entries for the "noteworthy and influential in all walks of life, in the UK and worldwide."
- Cambridge Histories OnlineIncludes the 8 volume set - The Cambridge Histoy of Music