What are these sources?
Reference sources are a good place to get an overview of a topic in a few paragraphs or a few pages. Looking up a topic in a reference book is an excellent way to familiarize yourself with the key concepts, terminology, and people associated with the topic. This background is important both for understanding a topic and for searching effectively in online databases for articles and books. In addition, many reference works provide carefully selected bibliographies which may lead you to further reading.
Print reference books are available on the second floor of the Olin Library.
Online Music Reference
- Oxford Music OnlineIncludes Grove Music, Oxford Dictionary of Music, and the Oxford Companion to Music. Limited to three simultaneous users.
- IPA Source This link opens in a new windowIPA Source was developed to benefit singers, teachers, and all those interested in the correct and knowledgeable performance of vocal literature. This resource offers texts to works for the solo voice in Latin, Italian, German, French, Spanish, and English.
Print Refererence
New Oxford History of Music
Opera and church music, 1630-1750 by Call Number: ML160 .N44 V.5ISBN: 0193163055Publication Date: 1975
Concert music, 1630-1750 by Call Number: ML160 .N44 V.6ISBN: 0193163063Publication Date: 1986This volume offers an overall view of a period which witnessed a proliferation of music in all genres, highlighting the musical landmarks and masterpieces of the age. It discusses the ode and oratorio in England, secular song in Europe, and the whole range of baroque instrumental music from keyboard music and the solo sonata to the orchestral suite and concerto grosso.
The age of enlightenment, 1745-1790 by Call Number: ML160 .N44 V.7ISBN: 0193163071Publication Date: 1973
The Age of Beethoven, 1790-1830 by Call Number: ML160 .N44 V.8ISBN: 019316308XPublication Date: 1982
Romanticism (1830-1890) by Call Number: ML160 .N44 V.9ISBN: 0193163098Publication Date: 1990This latest and last volume completes the set of The New Oxford History of Music in 10 volumes. It includes the whole span of western instrumental music and opera in the greater part of the nineteenth century and is edited by respected scholars of nineteenth-century music. In March 1830 Goethe complained to Eckermann that `everybody talks now about Classicism and Romanticism - which no one thought of fifty years ago'. Romanticism - a concept more easily recognized than defined - was the prevailing spirit of the vast outpouring of music in the sixty years chronicled in this volume.
Ars nova and the Renaissance, 1300-1540 by Call Number: ML160 .N44 V.3ISBN: 0198164505Publication Date: 1960
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