Music Encyclopedias
Preferred Music Encyclopedias
-
Classical Music Reference Library (ASP) This link opens in a new window Classical Music Reference Library brings together more than 30,000 pages of essential reference materials, spanning the entire history of Western classical music, in a unified online database. This release includes 26,774 essays and images from 22 sources, over 15,001 pages. Includes: * Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, ed. by Nicholas Slonimsky * Baker's Student Encyclopedia of Music, ed. by Laura Kuhn * Women Composers, ed. by Martha Furman Schleifer * The History of Classical Music, by Stuart A. Kallen * The Instruments of Music, by Stuart A. Kallen * The Liszt Companion, ed. by Ben Arnold * Music since 1900, 6th ed., ed. by Laura Kuhn * A Short History of Opera, by Donald Jay Grout * The Sibelius Companion, ed. by Glenda Dawn Goss
-
MusRef: An Online Guide to Print and Internet Resources for Music and Dance MusRef is a site devoted to music and dance bibliography and reference. The site consists of five main features: An online bibliography of music and dance bibliographies and reference sources (both print and online), A blog devoted to music and dance bibliography and reference, Basic introductions to reference tools intended to help students understand how reference sources can guide them to appropriate research materials, Links to unpublished bibliographies, A corresponding Facebook page designed as a forum for interested librarians, scholars, and students. At present the bibliography includes more than 7,300 bibliographies and reference sources (both print and online), approximately 1,880 of which are annotated with critiques on use, coverage, organization, and pros and cons (click here for guidelines on writing critiques).
-
Oxford History of Western Music This link opens in a new window The Oxford History of Western Music online offers an unmatched account of the evolution of Western classical music by one of the most prominent and provocative musicologists of our time, Richard Taruskin. The online version offers convenient access for anyone interested in Taruskin’s essential history of Western music, from first-time readers to long-time fans of the work, from students assigned chapters in a course to experienced scholars seeking a handy point of entry for their research. Readers can easily search across the entire work to pinpoint quotations or follow up references. They can jump across chapters through the browsable Table of Contents or through an editorially designed index. For users that also have access to Grove Music Online, Taruskin’s text is accompanied by editorially selected links to relevant articles in Grove.
-
Oxford Music Online (formerly Grove Music Online) Oxford Music Online is a new gateway that offers users the ability to access and cross-search the vast resources of Oxford's music reference in one location. Includes a completely redesigned Grove Music Online, with new content and functionality. Includes: * Grove Music Online * Encyclopedia of Popular Music * The Oxford Companion to Music * The Oxford Dictionary of Music
-
Oxford Bibliographies Online: Music This link opens in a new window Developed cooperatively with scholars and librarians worldwide, Oxford Bibliographies offers exclusive, authoritative research guides. Combining the best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia, this cutting-edge resource guides researchers to the best available scholarship across a wide variety of subjects. Oxford Bibliographies in Music combines the best features of a high-level encyclopedia and a traditional bibliography in a style tailored to meet the needs of today’s online researchers. Each article, written and reviewed by top scholars in the field, is rich with citations and annotations, expert recommendations, and narrative pathways to the most important works for virtually all areas of music.
-
Oxford Reference Online - Performing Arts This link opens in a new window Oxford Reference Online brings together language and subject reference works from one of the world's biggest reference publishers into a single cross-searchable resource. Includes: * The Oxford Companion to American Theatre * The Oxford Dictionary of Dance * The International Encyclopedia of Dance * The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States * The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques in Art * The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music * The Oxford Companion to Music * A Dictionary of Opera Characters * The Grove Book of Opera Singers * The Grove Book of Operas * The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera * The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare * The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance * The Concise Oxford Companion to the Theatre
-
African American Music Reference (ASP) This link opens in a new window African American Music Reference will contain 50,000 pages that offers the first comprehensive coverage of blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, gospel, and other forms of black American musical expression This release includes 2,771 essays and images from 71 sources, over 19,188 pages.
-
Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online (ASP) This link opens in a new window The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online is devoted to music research of all the world's peoples. It includes more than 9,000 pages of material, combined with entries by more than 700 expert contributors from all over the world.
-
Oxford Language Dictionaries Online This link opens in a new window The innovative Oxford Language Dictionaries Online site offers essential language resources never before available online: fully searchable, completely comprehensive bilingual dictionaries, and unique study materials that provide extra help with learning and using an expanding range of languages. Languages: Chinese, French, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish.
Other Encyclopedias
Other Useful Encyclopedias
-
Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free, collaboratively edited, and multilingual Internet encyclopedia supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 22 million articles (over 4 million in English alone) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. This resource is great for gathering background information that will have to be independently substantiated using other sources. Wikipedia has the potential to be a fantastic starting point for research, but requires additional work on the part of the researcher to critically evaluate the accuracy, currency, and possible bias(es) of the information presented there.
-
World Biographical Information System (WBIS) Online WBIS Online is the most comprehensive biographical database available, providing short biographical information on 5.49 Million people from the 8th century B.C. to the present.
Get Help
Music & Dance Help Desk
4432 HBLL - Level 4
Music & Dance Web Page
Hours: M-Th: 8am-9pm;
F: 8am-6pm; Sat:10am-6pm
Phone: 
(801) 422-1725
E-mail: music_reference@byu.edu
Chat requires JavaScript.
