Music Research Guide: Analysis of Musical Scores

One guide useful for older pieces is Music Analysis: An Annotated Guide to the Literature by Harold Diamond. ML128 .A7D5 1991  This title lists books, articles, and dissertations under the name of the composer. 

Another useful guide available online and in print is: Analyses of Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Music: 1940-2000. This resource indexes periodicals, dissertations, and books.

For analysis of historical music, a good place to start is with books.

• Biographies of composers often include descriptions or analyses of particular compositions.
• Books about historical time periods or specific musical genre may use individual works as examples.
• Find a book of interest then use the Index or the Table of Contents to look up the title of the piece.

If looking for books, remember that there are not always entire books dedicated to a single work.

Specific search terms are assigned to materials in databases and library catalogs. Some databases search the entire body of an article to look for the terms you choose, and some search only the subject terms assigned. Following are some common subject terms you may find useful in your research. Many of these can be used in combination with each other.

The search path to finding journal articles is:

www.liberty.edu/library - Browse All Databases – Click on arrow next to All Subjects -  Choose Music

Music Index

Journal articles covering every aspect of classical and popular music with coverage since 1970

*****RILM Abstract of Music Literature (Featured database)

Citations, abstracts, and subject indexing for music-related articles published in journals and conference proceedings, covering all levels from classical to popular music.

Cambridge Core

Full-text, peer-reviewed journals and e-books published by Cambridge University Press on wide variety of subjects including Music.

Music Online: Classical Music Reference Library

Reference materials spanning the entire history of Western classical music, including full-text of Baker's Dictionary of Music, Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, and Baker's Student Encyclopedia of Music

Oxford Music Online includes: Grove Music Online

Peer-reviewed reference resources, including Grove Music Online Encyclopedia, with comprehensive coverage of music, musicians, music-making, and music scholarship

Music Online: Opera in Video

• Inside the database - Choose Filter - then Content type - Interview

Naxos Music Library

• Inside the database - Choose Resources - then Work Analyses
• Search by Composer and work for descriptions

EBSCO QuickSearch

Single-search of a number of EBSCO databases

JSTOR

Full-text electronic access to back issues of core journals in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences

Project MUSE: Humanities and Social Sciences

Full-text, peer-reviewed scholarly books and journals in the humanities and social sciences from the world’s most distinguished university presses and scholarly societies

PROQUEST CENTRAL

Full-text scholarly journals, trade and professional publications, newspapers, magazines, dissertations, working papers, case studies, and market reports covering all major subject areas.

 Books and articles that are not available from the JFL Library can be requested through Interlibrary Loan.

Services

Interlibrary Loan (ILL) enables current students, faculty, and staff to request materials. These requests may include

1. Delivery of materials from our collections, including articles from our print journals
2. Books (excluding textbooks), audiovisual materials, and articles not owned by our library (Please note that some items may be difficult or impossible to borrow from other libraries; these include reference materials, rare or archival materials, theses or dissertations, audiovisual materials, and new or popular titles.)