Search Everything
Some suggested keywords for searching are listed below.
These links bring you to the library's discovery portal, which searches books, ebooks, articles, journals, and more. To narrow down your search, use the tools on the left-hand side of your results screen.
OR Create Your Own Search
OR Create Your Own SearchOR browse the shelves upstairs
M: Music
- M2: Monuments, sources, reprints, etc.
- M3: Complete and collected works of individual masters
- M5-M1450: Instrumental music
- M1495-M2199: vocal music
Books About Music
- ML13: Almanacs, directories, etc.
- ML48: librettos
- ML50: librettos
- ML55: essays, papers, addresses, etc.
- ML86: portraits, pictorial works
- ML90: writings on musicians
- ML93: manuscripts, autographs, facsimiles
- ML100: dictionaries, encyclopedias
- ML111: bibliography
- ML159: history and criticism
- ML410: biographies of composers
- ML460: instruments and instrumental music
- ML1400: vocal music
- ML3781: national (i.e., "folk") music
- ML3800: philosophy and physics
- MT2: history and criticism of theory
- MT6-MT950: instruction and study
Essential Databases
Selected Websites
- Bibliography: Online Resources for Music ScholarsFrom Harvard University, this guide collects links to archival collections, online scores and sound recordings; article indexes, discographies and bibliographies; scholarly societies; musical reference works; and a miscellany of useful websites.
- ChoralWikiThe Choral Public Domain Library hosts public-domain scores of more than 22,200 choral and vocal works by 2,600+ composers. Most scores are printed in PDF format and audio files are often included
- Cylinder Preservation and Digitization ProjectThis searchable database features all types of recordings made from the late 1800s to early 1900s, including popular songs, vaudeville acts, classical and operatic music, comedic monologues, ethnic and foreign recordings, speeches and readings.To bring these recordings to a wider audience, the Library makes them available to download or stream online for free.
- DRAMDRAM is a not-for-profit resource providing educational communities with on-demand streaming access to CD-quality audio (192kbps Mp4), complete original liner notes and essays from independent record labels and sound archives. Continuing in the tradition of DRAM's sister company New World Records, our primary focus is the preservation and dissemination of important recordings that have been neglected by the commercial marketplace, recordings that may otherwise become lost or forgotten.
- Hymnary.org: a comprehensive index of hymns and hymnalsan online hymn and worship music database for worship leaders, hymnologists, and amateur hymn lovers alike. At Hymnary.org you can search or browse hymns by title, tune, meter, key, scripture reference, and more.
- Jazz ArchiveThe Fillius Jazz Archive holds a collection of videotaped interviews with jazz musicians, arrangers, writers and critics. The collection generally focuses on artists associated with mainstream jazz and the swing era.
- League of American OrchestrasA nexus of knowledge and innovation, advocacy, and leadership advancement for managers, musicians, volunteers, and boards.
- Music Manuscripts OnlineThe goal of the Music Manuscripts Online project has been to create and to provide online access to high-quality images and descriptions of music manuscripts owned by The Morgan Library & Museum. Works by J. S. Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Fauré, Haydn, Liszt, Mahler, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Puccini, Schubert, and Schumann, among many others, can be viewed on these pages.
- Performance History Search | Carnegie HallSearches can be made by keyword, composer, work, performer, date, or date range. Results can be filtered by venue and genre, and search results can be saved or shared through a link or exported to a PDF.
- Performing Arts Encyclopedia: Explore music, theater, and dance at the Library of CongressThe Performing Arts Databases page contains database and catalog resources that are intended to help users with research in the performing arts areas.
- Sheet Music Collection: Lewis Music Library: MIT LibrariesThe Inventions of Note Sheet Music Collection was established in 1997 by the Lewis Music Library at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This sheet music collection consists of popular songs and piano compositions that portray technologies (old and new alike) as revealed through song texts and/or cover art.
- Sheet Music ConsortiumThe Sheet Music Consortium provides tools and services that promote access to and use of online sheet music collections by scholars, students, and the general public.
- UCSB English Broadside Ballad ArchiveMaking broadside ballads of the seventeenth century fully accessible as texts, art, music, and cultural records.
- USC Music Library: Sheet Music CatalogThe Sheet Music Catalog provides access to mostly popular sheet music of the 19th and 20th centuries housed at the University of South Carolina. The Collection focuses on Tin Pan Alley and Parlor Music and also contains works from the library's Center for the Southern African American Music Collection (CSAM).