Music History Digital Library

19th-Century California Sheet Music
"A virtual library of some 2,000 pieces of sheet music published in California between 1852 and 1900, together with related materials such as a San Francisco publisher's catalog of 1872, programs, songsheets, advertisements, and photographs."
By Mary Kay Duggan, Dept. of Music; School of Information Management & Systems, University of California, Berkeley.

Aaron Copland Collection
"The multiformat Aaron Copland Collection from which the online collection derives spans the years 1910 to 1990 and includes approximately 400,000 items documenting the multifaceted life of an extraordinary person who was composer, performer, teacher, writer, conductor, commentator, and administrator. It comprises both manuscript and printed music, personal and business correspondence, diaries, writings, scrapbooks, programs, newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs, awards, books, sound recordings, and motion pictures."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

American Mavericks
"Suzanne Vega hosts this 13-part Minnesota Public Radio series that brings you the sounds and personalities of musical innovation in America during the 20th century. Interviews with music-makers and discussion with San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas are highlights of the programs."
Listen to each program, two channels of continuous music composed by composers featured, or complete works on demand performed by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.

The Aria Database
"...is a diverse collection of information on over 1000 operatic arias. Designed for singers and non-singers alike, the Database includes translations and aria texts of most arias as well as a collection of MIDI files of operatic arias and ensembles."
By Robert Glaubitz

Band Music from the Civil War Era
"...makes available examples of a brilliant style of brass band music that flourished in the 1850s in the United States and remained popular through the nineteenth century. Bands of this kind served in the armies of both the North and the South during the Civil War. This online collection includes both printed and manuscript music (mostly in the form of "part books" for individual instruments) selected from the collections of the Music Division of the Library of Congress and the Walter Dignam Collection of the Manchester Historic Association (Manchester, New Hampshire). The collection features over 700 musical compositions, as well as 8 full-score modern editions and 19 recorded examples of brass band music in performance."
American Memory, Library of Congress

Beethoven Bibliography Database
"...Database is a fully-indexed bibliography of published (and selected unpublished) materials relating to Ludwig van Beethoven ... to bring all significant Beethoven materials from the late eighteenth century to the present under bibliographic control through the development of a specially designed database ... The Database is still in its early stages, but it already contains over 10,000 records and much indispensable information on Beethoven. At the present time, materials included in the Database come from the Center's own rich collection of books, first and early editions of scores, manuscripts (originals and facsimiles), and periodical articles."
Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, San Jose State University

bobdylan.com
Official Bob Dylan homepage.
"...is devoted to the songs, recordings and performances of Bob Dylan. It is sponsored by Columbia Records, Bob Dylan's record label since his first album in 1962 ... Central to bobdylan.com is the catalog of officially released albums and songs. There is a searchable database of Bob Dylan's published lyrics ... Naturally, music is everywhere on bobdylan.com. You'll find samples of every track on every album, plus a growing library of otherwise unreleased live music, studio rarities and other hard-to-find recordings."

• Performances
  "otherwise unreleased live recordings of Bob Dylan in concert"

Boston Symphony Orchestra

• Online Conservatory
  "...an interactive multimedia addition to its website, www.bso.org. Developed in partnership with Northeastern University and launching on February 7, the BSO Online Conservatory will offer music lovers an opportunity to explore some of the fascinating dimensions of the orchestra's performances through the power of the Internet."

The British Library

• National Sound Archive Catalogue
  "...includes entries for almost two-and-a-half million recordings held in the British Library National Sound Archive (NSA) and is updated daily. It is one of the largest catalogues of its kind anywhere in the world, covering both published and unpublished recordings in all genres from pop, jazz, classical and world music, to oral history, drama and literature, dialect, language and wildlife sounds."

Brown University Library Digital Collections

• African American Sheet Music 1820-1920
  "This collection consists of over 1400 pieces of African-American sheet music dating from 1820 through 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."

The Choral Public Domain Library
"The primary purpose of the Choral Public Domain Library (CPDL) is to create a repositoryof editions of music in the public domain ...To make available a large quantity of music which otherwise would not be published or performed ... To make an archive that is fully editable, allowing for changes as scholarship/performing needs dictate."

Classical Music Archives
"We offer tens of thousands of MIDI files and full length recordings by our Featured Artists in streamed Windows Media Audio and downloadable MP3s."

Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection
"This Preview of the online collection features catalog entries and images for 102 of the 1,650 instruments in the collection. The online collection will eventually include the complete Wind Instruments in the Dayton C. Miller Collection and selected items from other parts of the collection. Also included will be audio clips featuring demonstrations of selected instruments."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

[Dictionary] Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary
Created by Richard Cole and Ed Schwartz.

Dismuke's Virtual Talking Machine
Vintage Phonograph Recordings, 1900-1939
"This site is devoted to vintage music from the early decades of the 20th Century. All recordings have been transcribed into streaming Real Audio from the original 78 rpm discs in my personal collection. It is my hope that this site will help further the creation of a new generation of enthusiasts for an exciting, vibrant and, sadly, all but forgotten era of American popular culture."

Early Recorded Sounds and Wax Cylinders
"Explore early sound recording methods, two-minute wax cylinder records and antique phonographs; see plenty of rare vintage photos; and enjoy listening to early recorded sounds taken directly from the original wax cylinders."
By Glenn Sage

Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry
"...is a selection of more than 400 items from the Emile Berliner Papers and 108 Berliner sound recordings from the Library of Congress's Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. Berliner (1851-1929), an immigrant and a largely self-educated man, was responsible for the development of the microphone and the flat recording disc and gramophone player."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

Experience Music Project (EMP)
Includes an expanding EMP Digital Collection

[Foster, Stephen] Stephen Foster's Sketchbook
"Stephen Fosterís sketchbook is a twelve- by eight-inch (30.9 x 20.5 cm) book of 113 leaves half-bound in brown leather with heavy paper boards covered in red and blue marbleized paper...The sketchbook includes draft texts for sixty-four different songs including several of his most popular ones; a few pages include sketches of the music."
- University of Pittsburgh Digital Research Library

Hoagy Carmichael Collection
"...project to catalog, digitize, and preserve every item in Indiana Universityís extensive collections pertaining to the life and career of master songwriter Hoagland "Hoagy" Carmichael (1899-1981)...The web site will present a complete catalog of the entire Carmichael Collection, access to selected digital objects, and supplemental research information, such as genealogy. The Hoagy Carmichael Collection contains sound recordings of Hoagyís music, letters, photographs of him and his family, print and handwritten musical compositions, and more
- Indiana University Digital Library Program

Ihr Lieder! Ihr meine guten Lieder!
A performer's guide to musical settings for one or two voices of the poetry of Heinrich Heine (1797-1856)
"This website is the pilot phase of a long-term project to create and disseminate online reviews of all available musical settings for one or two voices of Heinrich Heine's poems, starting with settings of his earliest lyrics ... The ultimate goal is to familiarize as many performers as possible with the wealth of music which is available, and to stimulate the study and performance of these songs."
By Peter W. Shea

Indiana University Digital Music Library Project (DML)
"...aims to establish a digital music library testbed system containing music in a variety of formats, involving research and development in the areas of system architecture, metadata standards, component-based application architecture, and network services. This system will be used as a foundation for digital library research in the areas of instruction, usability, human-computer interaction, and intellectual property rights."

The Irving Fine Collection, Ca. 1914-1962
"The career of Irving Fine (1914-1962), composer, conductor, writer, and academic, is documented in the Library of Congress Music Division by approximately 4,350 items from the Irving Fine Collection. Comprising manuscript and printed music, sketchbooks, writings, personal and business correspondence, scrapbooks, programs, clippings, and sound recordings, the collection contains most of the creative work of this colleague of Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein...This first online release presents a selection of 57 photographs, a sketchbook that includes sketches for the woodwind Partita and a string quartet, a manuscript score for the String Quartet (1952), a recorded performance of the Quartet, and the finding aid for the collection."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

Jewish National and University Library, Hebrew University

• The National Sound Archives
  The Shapell Family Digitization Project
  A collection of sounds and music from a variety of Jewish holidays, communities and languages.

Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture

• Gangsta Misogyny: A Content Analysis of the Portrayals of Violence Against Women in Rap Music, 1987-1993
  By Edward G. Armstrong; Vol. 8(2) (2001) 96-126
  Linked with permission of the author.

Lebrecht Music Collection
"...is the world's largest specialist archive and picture library of classical music photographs, lithographs and paintings."
Picture Galleries include: Choir ; Composers ; Concert and Opera Houses ; Conductors ; Dance ; Instruments ; Middle Ages ; Musical Connections ; Musicians ; Orchestra ; Singers.

Leopold Stokowski: Making Music Matter
A multimedia exhibit from Penn Special Collections.
Curated by Marjorie Hassen, Otto E. Albrecht Music Library, University of Pennsylvania

Library of Congress

• Performing Arts Reading Room - Music Division
  "...is the service point for the broad and diverse collections of the Music Division at the Library of Congress. Numbering approximately 12 million items and spanning more than 800 years of Western music history and practice, these holdings include the classified music and book collections, music and literary manuscripts and related artifacts, music-related periodicals and microforms, copyright deposits, and five collections of musical instruments ... The Music Division also holds more than 500 named special collections in music, theater, and dance, which are remarkably disparate in size, content, and format."

  • De Musica
    / Johannes, Afflighemensis.
    12th-century theoretical treatise. Manuscript on vellum.
  • I Hear American Singing
    "This Web site invites visitors to experience the diversity of American performing arts through the Library of Congress's unsurpassed collections of scores, sheet music, audio recordings, films, photographs, maps, and other materials."
    • Historic Sheet Music, 1800-1922
      "This sheet music collection consists of approximately 9,000 items published from 1800 to 1922, although the majority is from 1850 to1920."
    • Patriotic Melodies
      "See, hear, and learn more about some of our nation's most beloved music."
    • The Gerry Mulligan Collection
      "Composer, arranger, performer and band leader; hear Mulligan, in his own words, on music & history."
    • Home Sweet Home: Life in Nineteenth-Century Ohio
      "Before mp3s and MTV, families used to make their own music, and Ohio was no exception."
    • Walt Whitman
      "Learn more about Walt Whitman and his poem 'I Hear America Singing.'"
• Recorded Sound Reference Center
  "...provides access to the commercial and archival audio holdings of the Library of Congress. The collection dates from 1926 when Victor Records donated over 400 discs to the Library's Music Division to supplement its print and manuscript holdings. In the custody of the Motion Picture Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division since 1978, the collection has grown to include over 2 million items encompassing audio formats from cylinders to CDs. The holdings complement the field recordings of the American Folklife Center and the moving image collections served in the Motion Picture and Television Reading Room."

Mi2N - Music Industry News Network

Mississippi State University Libraries - Digital Library Collection

• [Ragtime] Charles H. Templeton Sheet Music Collection
  "...Included among his treasures is a collection of some 22,000 pieces of sheet music from late nineteenth and early twentieth century America. The sheet music illustrates a broad spectra of music genres, from the ragtime of Scott Joplin to the dixieland of W. C. Handy to the smooth ballads of Irving Berlin to the stirring patriotic anthems of John Phillips Sousa and George M. Cohan to the early roots of big band sounds."

TheMoMI.org - The Museum of Musical Instruments - (dead link)
"The MoMI encompasses a multifaceted mixture of history and design expressed through instruments, artists, and their music. Instruments selected for the MoMI include some of the finest examples from the 19th and 20th century, intelligently categorized to create a rich interactive experience that reveals many important aspects of modern culture. These permanent collections provide viewers with fascinating stories of the musical experience...The MoMI.org is the world's first virtual museum dedicated to appreciation of the musical instrument as a work of art and historical icon."

Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, ca. 1820-1740 ; 1870-1885 - (dead link)
"...contains more than 62,500 pieces of historical sheet music registered for copyright: more than 15,000 registered during the years 1820-1740 and more than 47,000 registered during the years 1870-1885. Included are popular songs, operatic arias, piano music, sacred and secular choral music, solo instrumental music, method books and instructional materials, and music for band and orchestra. The collection documents the attitudes and tastes of a bygone era with music of many varieties and sources, all of it published in the United States."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

Mutopia
"...a place where music is free for everyone! Download it, print it out, and share it with your friends...Mutopia is similar in spirit to Project Gutenburg - but consists of a growing collection of free music...This is the essence of Mutopia - a growing number of musical scores all typeset using GNU Lilypond by volunteers. All the music is downloadable for free as Postscript (.ps) and PDF (.pdf) files (at both A4 and Letter paper sizes), as well as Lilypond's own LY (.ly) file format."

New Interfaces for Musical Expression 2003 International Conference (NIME03)
Proceedings, McGill University, Montreal, May 2003.

New York Public Library West Website

• Touring West
  19th-century Performing Artists on the Overland Trails
  "This online exhibition celebrates the creators, promoters, and performers of professional theater, music, and dance who toured the American continent...Performances are documented here through promotional ephemera such as broadsides, programs, flyers, handbills, souvenirs, postcards, and, after 1848, photographs. Through scores and prompt scripts, annotated by musicians and stage managers, we can learn what the audience experienced at the events. Business records, ship or train schedules and shipping manifestos speak to the realities of the tour."

NPR - All Things Considered
"NPR's Online Music Show"

"Now What a Time": Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals (1938-1943)
"consists of approximately one hundred sound recordings, primarily blues and gospel songs, and related documentation from the folk festival at Fort Valley State College (now Fort Valley State University), Fort Valley, Georgia. The documentation was created by John Wesley Work III in 1941 and by Lewis Jones and Willis Laurence James in March, June, and July 1943. Also included are recordings made in Tennessee and Alabama (including six Sacred Harp songs) by John Work between September 1938 and 1941. These recording projects were supported by the Library of Congress's Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center). Song lists made by the collectors, correspondence with the Archive about the trips, and a special issue of the Fort Valley State College student newsletter, The Peachite: Festival Number, are also included. One interesting feature of this collection is the topical rewording of several standard gospel songs to address the wartime concerns of the performers."
American Memory Project, Library of Congress

A Perceptual Approach to the Description and Analysis of Acousmatic Music
By W. Luke Windsor, 1995 Doctoral Thesis, City University

The Rap Dictionary
By Patrick Atoon

Save Our Sounds
A Joint Project of the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress
"The collections include thousands of recordings from every state of the union and include every genre of spoken word and music -- speeches, tales, biographical narrative, poetry, blues, gospel, jazz, folk, ethnic, country, bluegrass and old time, polka and contra, western swing and conjunto, pow wow and sacred song -- providing a documentary aural history of the nation from the late 19th century to the present."

Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip
"...is a multiformat ethnographic field collection that includes nearly 700 sound recordings, as well as fieldnotes, dust jackets, and other manuscripts documenting a three-month, 6,502-mile trip through the southern United States...recorded approximately 25 hours of folk music from more than 300 performers. These recordings represent a broad spectrum of traditional musical styles, including ballads, blues, children's songs, cowboy songs, fiddle tunes, field hollers, lullabies, play-party songs, religious dramas, spirituals, and work songs."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

Union Songs
"For 2 centuries people across the world have built unions. This site documents the songs and poems that they made in the process, union songs. It also includes songs and poems that are being written today, as the process of union building continues."
By Mark Gregory

United States Copyright Office
Includes information, laws, forms, reports, legislation, and links to additional copyright sites.

• Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) (October 28, 1998)

University of Georgia Libraries - Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library

• Selections from the Paris Music Hall Collection
  "The Paris Music Hall Collection comprises over 6,000 original renderings of costume designs and 1,000 original renderings of curtain designs for the music halls of Paris from 1920-1938."

"We'll Sing to Abe Our Song": Sheet Music about Lincoln, Emancipation, and the Civil War
From the Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana
"includes more than two hundred sheet-music compositions that represent Lincoln and the war as reflected in popular music. The collection spans the years from Lincoln's presidential campaign in 1859 through the centenary of Lincoln's birth in 1909."
- American Memory, Library of Congress

Electronic Journals & Newsletters

• Alternate Music Press (AMP)
  The Multimedia Journal of New Music
• andante magazine

  • "The Greatest Work of Art in the Entire Cosmos"
    "Robert Hilferty looks at Karlheinz Stockhausen's notorious statement about the terrorist attacks of 11September."

• Critical Musicology Journal
• Current Cites
• Early Music Periodicals: Past and Present
  Annotated Bibliography
• ECHO: A Music-Centered Journal
  "...an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal created and edited by graduate students in the Department of Musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles."
• Ethnomusicology Online
• Film Music Magazine
  "The Professional Voice of Music for Film and Television"

• Jazz Magazine

• Journal of New Music Research
  Electronic Appendix
• Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music
  Official publication of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music
• LAMúsiCa: Latin American Music Center Newsletter
  Indiana University School of Music
• MikroPolyphonie
• Min-ad: Israel Studies in Musicology Online
• Music Theory Online
  A Journal of Criticism, Commentary, Research, and Scholarship
  "...is the refereed, electronic journal of the Society for Music Theory, Inc."
• NewMusicBox
  The Web Magazine from the American Music Center (AMC)
• MuSICA Research Notes
• NotitiÊ Cantus
• Research Perspectives in Music Education - (dead link)
  University of South Florida School of Music
• RPM Online - The Review of Popular Music
• Society for American Music Bulletin
  (Formerly the Sonneck Society Bulletin)
• Soundsite
  The online journal of Sound Theory, Philosophy of Sound and Sound Art.
• Sonances: Studies in Music

Dissertations

Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology - Online (DDM-Online)
"...is a 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. Containing more than 11,600 records, including the contents of the earlier printed editions of Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology... Please note that DDM-Online does not include the dissertations themselves."

Alban Berg's Filmic Music: Intentions and Extensions of the Film Music Interlude in the Opera Lulu - (dead link)
By Goldsmith, Melissa Ursula Dawn, Dept. of Music, Louisiana State University

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