Saint Michael's College

Research by Subject

  Reference Sources

Credo Reference
Search Music encyclopedias and dictionaries

The Encyclopedia of Popular Music    10 vols.
REF ML 102 .P66 G84 2006

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians   29 vols.
REF ML 100 .N48 2002

The New Grove Dictionary of Opera    4 vols
REF ML 102 .O6 N5 2004

The Oxford History of Western Music    6 vols.
REF ML 160 .T18 2005

SMC Music Department

  Internet Sources

• Music Reference

The Library of Congress
http://www.loc.gov/
Offers extensive music reference.  Many pages need plenty of RAM and a RealAudio player.

The Ballad Index Web Site
http://www.csufresno.edu/folklore/BalladIndexTOC.html
Offers detailed information on first publications and actual ages of "folk" ballads for those who need to know which folk songs are actually in the public domain.   "Folk" does not necessarily equate with "old", and about 75% of the most familiar folk songs are NOT in the public domain.

• Free Sheet Music on the Web

The Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection
http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/index.html
Johns Hopkins University's Eisenhower Library. This is collection is about 20,000 items of popular music from 1700s to 1922. All currently available downloads are PD. The Levy collection was the basis of the Dover Books sheet music facsimile publications. All pieces of the collection are indexed on this site and a search will retrieve a catalog description of the pieces. An image of the cover and each page of music will also be retrieved if the music was published before 1924 and is in the public domain.

Ceolas
http://ceolas.org/ceolas.html
Since 1994 Ceolas is the home of Celtic music everything including several tune books and an index in which you can identify which tunes are PD. Ceolas houses the largest online collection of information on Celtic music, and has links to hundreds of related sites. Current popularity is over half a million hits per month.

• Free Recordings on the Web

Edison Recordings
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/vshtml/vssnde.html
From the American Variety Stage around 1920 are on line at the Library of Congress.  You'll need plenty of RAM and a RealAudio player. Variety entertainment dominated the popular recording industry's acoustic era (pre -1925), from its beginnings in the 1890s, when records were made on wax cylinders, right up to the beginning of the jazz age in the mid-1920s. From slapstick vaudeville routines and ethnic dialect skits to romantic ballads and dramatic recitations, sound recordings brought variety entertainment into the homes of millions of Americans.

• Music in the Public Domain

Resources/Song List/Search the Web
http://www.pdinfo.com/resource.htm
Resources for finding usable public domain music. Alphabetical lists of more than 3000 songs now in the public domain in the United States. Web search engine for individual song titles.