LibGuides: Music: Websites

Gateways and general

AllMusic
A comprehensive music reference source for recorded music that can be used to investigate everything from an out of print recording to a new release by a specific composer. The resource covers all genres and styles of music. You can search for music by artists, albums, songs, styles or labels.
American Musicological Society: Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology
An international database of bibliographic records for completed dissertations and new dissertation topics in the fields of musicology, music theory, and ethnomusicology.
American Musicological Society: WWW Sites of Interest to Musicologists
Comprehensive list of websites related to musicology
Bach Bibliography
Hosted by Queen's University, Belfast, this resource provides a comprehensive bibliography of J. S. Bach. Users can search by title keyword or year to retrieve results. The database contains over 21,000 sources of information from published books and articles.
Bach Home Page
Archive project detailing Bach's life, works and recommended links.
Golden Pages for Musicologists
Provides announcements for forthcoming conferences in musicology, an archive of dissertation abstracts, links to music departments worldwide, and other links of interest to musicologists.
Irning S. Gilmore Music Library
Hosted at Yale University Library; this site features comprehensive lists of links under various subject categories, including computer music, musicology, popular music, online scores and sheet music collections.
Online Resources for Music Scholars
Hosted and maintained by Harvard University.
Soundtrack.Net
A useful source for news and information about composers, movies and television soundtracks, albums, and original scores.
The White Book
The White Book is an annual directory for the UK music and events industries. It has been published for more than 20 years and lists international venues as well as event contacts in the UK. It has around 37,000 listings across more than 400 categories.

Associations and organisations

Aldeburgh Music
World-renowned as an outstanding year-round performance centre, Aldeburgh also seeks to foster and encourage artists at all stages of their career.
The Barbican
A world-class arts and learning organisation, the Barbican aims to push the boundaries of all major art forms including dance, film, music, theatre and visual arts.
Boosey & Hawkes
Information on music, publications, instruments, artists, composers and more can be found at this site from the international music publisher.
Britten-Pears Foundation
Promotes the musical legacy of the composers Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. It features news, performance details, library resources, research, projects and links to other music resources.
English National Opera
Features information about the ENO, as well as forthcoming productions.
Faber Music
Information, articles, links and ordering information from one of the UK's leading music publishing houses.
International Association of Music Information Centres
The Association is a global network of organisations that promote new music.
International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres
International branch of IAML.
International Association of Music Libraries (IAML): UK & Ireland
IAML represents and promotes the interests of music librarians and libraries, music–related archives and music information providers throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland. It provides a useful subject tree for resources in music.
International Music Council (IMC)
Founded in 1949 by UNESCO, the IMC is the world's largest network of organisations, institutions and individuals working in the field of music.
Royal College Of Music
Features information about their collections, research, archives and course. There is also a link to the library website and recommended links to other web-based music resources.
Royal Opera House
Home to the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet.
Southbank Centre
Created in 1951 for the Festival of Britain, Southbank Centre draws on its heritage as a festival site, with a wide range of music, dance, art, performance and spoken word events throughout the year.
Arts Council England
Provides comprehensive information about all performing arts and includes links to other resources and information about how to obtain funding.
UK Theatre Web
Provides useful information on amateur groups and training, it is updated three times a week and provides good links to other resources

Libraries, catalogues and music information centres

Barbican Library
The City of London's leading public lending Library provides books, spoken word recordings, DVDs, CDs and scores available for loan, with the music collection (including listening facilities and practice pianos) being a particular strength.
British Library Music Collections
Contains information regarding the music collections as well as links to other music related departments and services. There are also links to recommended external music websites. From here you can access the British Library catalogue where the music holdings are indexed.
British Music Collection
Housed in the Music Library at the University of Huddersfield, this is a leading resource for 20th & 21st century music in the UK, holding scores, recordings and biographical information on modern British composers.
Cecilia
An online guide to music collections within libraries, museums and archives in the UK and Ireland. Users can search by name, place, time period, subject, tradition and institution.
Encore!
The International Association of Music Libraries (IAML) national catalogue of vocal and orchestral sets in the UK, search by title, author, publisher or free text.
Gramophone
The online version of 'the world's best classical music magazine'. This is not a full text version of the print magazine, but the site is an excellent source of information and news.
Westminster Music Library
One of the largest public music libraries in the south of the UK. Search the online catalogue for orchestral sets or visit the gateway of recommended music links.

Digital archives

American Memory Performing Arts and Music Collections
Over thirty collections from the American Memory project of the Library of Congress, including the Leonard Bernstein Collection, Aaron Copland, and Irving Fine collections, Southern Appalachian fiddle music, folk music from the Dust Bowl, and several large collections of nineteenth-century sheet music, among many others.
Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads
Broadside ballads are songs that were published in Britain on single sheets (broadsides) and sold for a penny or half-penny from the sixteenth through to the early twentieth centuries. This database provides bibliographic access to 30,000 of the ballads, providing digitized images (of varying scan quality) of each ballad sheet. Note that most of the sheets do not contain musical notation, but for those that do, sound files are included.
Center for the History of Music Theory and Literature
Hosts several digital projects offering access to digitized editions of texts on music theory and aesthetics, and to bibliographic databases.
Charles H. Templeton, Sr. Music Museum
Hosted by the Mississippi State University Library this digital archive features music and lyrics from some of the 22,000 pieces of sheet music held in the Charles Templeton Collection, including minstrel music, show tunes, rags and blues.
Chopin's First Editions Online
Chopin’s First Editions Online (CFEO) was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council from March 2004 to August 2007. The c. 5,500 digital images were obtained from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Bodleian Library, British Library, Narodowy Instytut Fryderyka Chopina, University of Chicago Library and seventeen other libraries.
Choral Public Domain Library (aka ChoralWiki)
Founded in December 1998 you will find free choral/vocal scores, texts, translations, and other useful information.
Classical String Quartets
Hosted by Duke University Libraries, this is a digital collection of rare and unusual publications of music for string quartet dating from about 1770-1840.
Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music
A portal to worldwide collections of medieval polyphonic music manuscripts from 800 to 1550. Provides access to high-quality images of some of the manuscripts.
English Broadside Ballad Archive
Hosted by the University of California Santa Barbara, this archive is "dedicated to mounting online surviving early ballads printed in English," including online images of each ballad, sung versions, and background essays.
EVIA Digital Archive
The Ethnographic Video for Instruction and Analysis (EVIA) digital archive of ethnographic field video features significant music content from around the world.
Hofmeister XIX:19th-Century Music Publications
A searchable version of the Hofmeister Monatsberichte for 1829-1900, containing over 330,000 records of music publications.
IMSLP Petrucci Music Library
Features free public domain sheet music from over 35,000 works and 87,000 scores. The site includes music from composers who are willing to share their music for free of charge.
The Juilliard Manuscript Collection
A collection of 140 autograph manuscripts, sketches, engravers' proofs, and first editions, which were donated to the Juilliard School in 2006. Included in the collection is an engraver's proof of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and the original manuscript of Beethoven's Grosse Fuge in his arrangment for piano four hands.
Music Treasures Consortium
Digital collections of music manuscripts and printed materials from the British Library, Harvard, the Library of Congress, Juilliard School, Pierpont Morgan Library, and New York Public Library.
New Music USA Online Library
A comprehensive digital database that contains over 57,000 works by more than 6,000 composers, and includes over 14,000 media samples (recordings and scores). The New Music USA Online Library was originated by the American Music Center and continues today under the guidance of New Music USA.
New York Philharmonic Digital Archives
Digitised archives of the New York Philharmonic up to 1970. Contains scores with conductors' marking, including Leonard Bernstein and others; parts marked by orchestra musicians, printed programs from 1943-1970 (including program notes), business and planning folders, and thousands of photographs and other images.
Open Folklore
A project of the American Folklore Society and the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries to provide online access to a wide variety of materials relevant to the study of folklore, including books, journals, and gray literature.
Sheet Music Consortium
A searchable and browseable database providing access to online collections of historic sheet music from the combined holdings of several libraries.
Tobar an Dualchais
This site contains several thousand hours of digitised Gaelic and Scots recordings, including not only songs but also poetry and stories. The recordings are from all parts of Scotland, from the 1930 on.
Union Songs
Texts and audio files of over 640 songs dealing with work, slavery, protest, unions, and other activisms.

Web search tips

Google Scholar. Try using this to limit your search to scholarly sources.

Google Advanced Search. You can search within a particular domain eg .gov.uk. This will limit your search to UK government publications.

Or, instead of searching the Internet, go directly to the source. We have selected some websites here that could be useful to your search.

"Double quotation marks". If you're searching for the title of a document or searching for a phrase, enclose your search in "double quotation marks".

Jazz, blues, and folk

All About Jazz
A site produced by jazz fans for jazz fans; their mission: to provide information and opinion about jazz from the past, present, and future. Reviews, audio links and local club information.
The English Folk Dance and Song Society
Online audio and photographic material available within English Dance and Song Magazine and the Folk Music Journal. These titles are both available under the publications link. See also the link to Library and Archive for an English folk song bibliography and discography.
Jazz Review
News, reviews and features can be found at this site. You can also subscribe to their Jazz Newsletter.
Jazz Studies Online
The website features journal articles, book chapters, videos and a comprehensive listing of resources for jazz music. Browse the site by style, category, people or era for further information. The site also contains reference materials such as bibliographies, discographies, filmographies and other tools for music scholars.
On Demand Jazz Piano Lessons
Hosted by PianoGroove which is an online jazz piano tuition platform you can access a series of jazz piano lessons filmed in high definition. These can be streamed on any device, including laptop, tablet or mobile. All lessons include in-video notation.
The Outside Shore
Official website of professional jazz musician and educator Marc Sabatella who is the author of 'A Jazz Improvisation Primer' – this text is free to browse online via the website.

Ethnomusicology and social aspects

The African music encyclopedia
You can search the encyclopedia for information about African artists and join a maillist for news about African music around the world.
Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy UK
Here you will find information on the Nordoff Robbins Centre and their work, as well as information on music therapy in general.
Society for Ethnomusicology
An association devoted to the support of ethnomusicology and to the study of music-making all over the world.

Sonic arts

Australasian Computer Music Association (ACMA)
The ACMA is a community of composers, performers, teachers and technologists who are making music with computers. The site links to a listserv discussion which you can subscribe to.
Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC)
Founded in 1986, the Canadian Electroacoustic Community (CEC) is Canada’s official national association for electroacoustics.
Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Elektroakustische Musik e.V. (Germany)
This website features recordings of concerts, symposiums, portraits of composers, studios, projects and research projects, thematic features or ongoing debates. Also includes reports of festivals, symposiums, congresses and exhibitions, as well as productions from archives of electroacoustic music. The website is written in German but can be translated using tools such as Google Translator.
International Computer Music Association
Under the resources button there is a links area. Here you will find an extensive list of computer music links ranging from links to composers, performance groups, institutions, organisations, conferences, publishers and research institutions to name but a few.
New Adventures in Sound Art
The website of a Canadian not for profit organisation that produces electroacoustic and experimental sound art. Some interesting MP3 can be found in the audio archives as well as publications.
Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS Online)
The SEAMUS website contains an extensive set of links to electroacoustic music newsgroups and organisations. The general links section also features suggestions to hardware and software sites.
Sound and Music
This is a highly recommended resource and formerly known as the Sonic Arts Network. In the resources section of the website there is a virtual library. Here you can find blogs, podcasts and articles relating to the Sonic Arts. The SAM podcast section includes a vast array of ‘opportunities’ and events.

Listening databases

National Jukebox
The Library of Congress hosts the National Jukebox, which makes available historical sound recordings to the public free of charge.
UCSB Cylinder Project
The University of California Santa Barbera Libraries have created a digital collection of over 8,000 cylinder recordings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In an effort to bring these recordings to a wider audience, they can be freely downloaded or streamed online.