Research Guides: Music: Databases

Music Databases

Grove Music Online
Provides direct access to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, a collection of reference articles, biographies, bibliographic entries, and discographies. It is also part of Oxford Music Online.
IMSLP/ Petrucci Music Library
The International Music Score Library Project is a wiki-based, searchable database of pdf, gif, epub, midi and other music file types. Most (but not all) pieces are in the public domain, and the contributors range from individual enthusiasts who are scanning old sheet music to major university initiatives. Over 170,000 scores.

International Bibliography of Theatre and Dance This link opens in a new window
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IBTD, a fully-indexed databank of journal article, book, and dissertation citations on all aspects of theatre and performance the world over, includes full-text from over 170 journals and 360 books.
JSTOR
JSTOR is a searchable full-text archive of nearly 2,600 scholarly journals in 75 subject areas, including Music and Performing Arts. Coverage: from earliest year of each journal up to 3-5 years ago.
Library Music Source
Classical music scores, parts, and accompaniments ready to download, save, view, and print. Over 35,000 works from over 350 Western composers.
Music Index
Indexes more than 725 international music periodicals covering nearly all styles and genres of music. and the music industry. References articles, book reviews, obituaries, and more. 1978-Current
Music Online: African American Music Reference
Provides full-text reference articles, biographies, images, sheet music, lyrics, liner notes, and discographies which chronicle the African American experience through music. Covers blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, and other forms.
Music Online: Garland Encyclopedia of World Music
Covers music of all the world's peoples. Each volume contains an overview of a region's musical traditions and themes, descriptions of musical genres and practices. Ten volume printed set in HSSE – 3rd floor - 780.9 G183 1998
Music Online: Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries This link opens in a new window
Streaming access to Folkways and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (nearly 3,000 albums of music, spoken word, and sounds) plus several other ethnographic labels, including Cook Records, Monitor Records, and the International Library of African Music (ILAM). Special vocabularies facilitate browsing by musical instrument, geographic area, cultural group, genre, and other fields. Liner notes available under a “Related Documents” tab. Downloads available through a “Purchase URL” link.
Naxos Music Library (NML) This link opens in a new window
Online classical music library offers streaming access to well over 120,000 CDs of standard and rare repertoire.

Oxford Music Online
Provides full-text access to music reference resources. Includes over 50,000 articles, 28,000 biographies, 400,000 bibliographic entries, and thousands of discographies. It also includes Grove Music Online.

Rock's Backpages This link opens in a new window
Archive of popular music journalism of the last 60 years. More than 35,000 articles from hundreds of US and UK publications, including Creem, Melody Maker, and New Musical Express. Covers Rock ‘n’ Roll, R&B, Funk, Punk, and other genres. Articles are fully searchable by author, artists, genre, keyword, date, publication, etc. Also features audio interviews.

Coverage: 1950s to the present.

Sheet Music Consortium
The Sheet Music Consortium is an open collection of digitized sheet music using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. Harvested metadata about sheet music in participating collections is hosted by UCLA Digital Library Program.