Quick Links to Online Encyclopedias, Dictionaries, & eBooks
- Encyclopedia of Popular MusicFull-text of Colin Larkin's 10-volume The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, 4th edition. Contains entries covering popular music from the 1900 to the present including jazz, country, folk, rap, reggae, techno, musicals, and world music. Covers popular music genres, trends, styles, record labels, venues, music festivals, and biographies.
- Grove Music OnlineGrove Music Online is *the* place to start any music-related search. Grove Music Online contains articles on all aspects of music, biographies, composer works lists, bibliographies, images, and more.
- IPA SourceIPA Source is a collection of IPA transcriptions of art songs, arias, and liturgical texts originally written in English, French, German, Italian, Latin, and Spanish.
- Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG)MGG Online contains the complete contents of the second edition (2008) of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, plus continuous updates, revisions, and additions. MGG Online provides a bilingual English/German interface.
- Oxford History of Western MusicOnline version of Richard Taruskin''s five volume print work. Includes all 1.25 million words, 500 images, and 1,800 musical examples from the updated paperback edition. Also provides links to relevant Grove Music Online articles. Please note: Access limited to two simultaneous users.
- Oxford Music OnlineA gateway to Oxford's music reference publications, offering users the ability to search Grove Music Online together with The Oxford Companion to Music and the Oxford Dictionary of Music, a total collection of more than 70,000 articles on music written and reviewed by subject experts and suitable for musical amateurs, professionals, and scholars alike. Please note: Database restricted to five simultaneous users
Start with a Good Encyclopedia
A great place to begin any music search is to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
Grove's should be your first stop. Articles cover all aspects of music, musicians, composers, historical periods, and so on. Each composer's biography includes a worklist and a bibliography. Be sure to check the bibliography--it can lead you to some new sources.
The online edition of Grove's also contains The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, and The New Grove Dictionary of American Music.
A print copy of Grove's can be found in the reference section at
REF ML100.N48 2000
Grove's is part of the Oxford Reference collection. Additional titles include: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, and the Oxford Companion to Music.
If you want to search all the sources at once, just type your term(s) in the "Search" box, or you can choose to search only "Grove's" by clicking the box labeled "Search Only Grove Music Online."
Oxford History of Western Music
Oxford History of Western Music by Call Number: ML160 .T18 2010The Oxford History of Western Music is a five-volume survey of the traditions of Western music.
Richard Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music is also an excellent source to check.
Online: Oxford History of Western Music
In Reference: REF ML160.T18 2005
In the stacks (you can check these out): ML160.T18 2010
Beyond Grove's and Taruskin
Brief but informative biographies can be found in:
Baker's Biographical Dictionary of MusiciansCall Number: REF ML105.B16 2001
The Harvard Dictionary of Music by Call Number: REF ML100.A64 2003See this one-volume work for music terminology, styles and forms, and descriptions of instruments.
