Research Starter: Music Composition

JSTOR is an interdisciplinary archive of over one thousand leading academic journals from the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work. It is full-text searchable and includes images. There are embargos of between 3-5 years for most journal titles. Journals are always included from volume 1, issue 1.

RILM Abstracts of Music Literature is an international bibliography of scholarly writings on music and related disciplines. RILM provides a broad, international coverage and concise abstracts. All scholarly works are indexed (articles, books, bibliographies, catalogues, dissertations, Festschriften, films and videos, iconographies, critical commentaries to complete works, ethnographic recordings, conference proceedings, reviews, etc.). Concert reviews, recording notes, pedagogical manuals, etc. are indexed if they are of scholarly interest.

Areas of coverage encompass historical musicology, ethnomusicology, instruments and voice, librarianship, performance practice and notation, theory and analysis, pedagogy, liturgy, dance, criticism, music therapy, and interdisciplinary studies on music and various other fields, including literature, dramatic arts, visual arts, acoustics, aesthetics, anthropology, sociology, linguistics and semiotics, mathematics, philosophy, physiology, psychology, and physics.

Online coverage spans from 1976 to the present and contains surveyed data from 775 international music periodicals from over 40 countries, with English translations from 22 languages. Some backfile data from the period 1962-1975 is also included. 

Topics concerned with every aspect of the classical and popular world of music are thoroughly categorized and organized according to the framework of an internal Subject List, which includes both Subject and Geographic headings. Covering all styles and genres of music, The Music Index cites book reviews, obituaries, news periodicals, and news and articles about music, musicians, and the music industry. The thoroughness of indexing and subject heading research, along with comprehensive coverage of the music field, makes The Music Index an invaluable resource for both the novice scholar and the experienced academician.

Updated frequently, Grove Music Online is an essential tool for anyone interested in researching, teaching, or just learning more about music. Written and edited by more than 9,000 subject experts, Grove’s 57,000 articles offer clear overviews of topics from a scholarly perspective and include extensive bibliographies, which are curated to guide users through existing scholarship. Grove’s 40,000 biographical articles provide life information and detailed works lists for composers, performers, and other important musical figures. Grove Music Online also features more than 6,000 images, musical examples, and links to audio and video examples. It is the perfect starting point for scholarly research, but with a clear and engaging writing style, Grove is easily accessible to amateur music-lovers as well.

Each volume contains an overview of a geographic region, a survey of its musical heritage, and a description of specific musical genres, practices, and performances. More than 9,000 pages of material and 300 audio recordings, combined with entries by more than 700 expert contributors from all over the world, make this the most complete body of work focused on world music.

The Classical Music Library is the world's first recorded classical music collection provided on-line
for listening on computers. More than 50,000 tracks now available, a large and growing collection of classical music recordings for listening, browsing and searching are provided, benchmarked against the Music Library Association listing of essential sound recordings. Classical.com has licensed recordings from some of the most respected classical music labels in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe, and legally compensates artists and labels. Thousands of program notes, composer biographies, and images are cross-referenced to the recordings, and the latest classical music news and information are provided by the Classical editorial team. Advanced searching functionalities are available to aid research in a range of ways suited to user levels of knowledge. Methods are provided to organize, create, and save music selections.

NAXOS is the world's leading producer of classical music. The NAXOS Music Library consists of over 500,000 music tracks that can be listened to in CD quality online. Information about composers, CD cover art, and liner notes are also available. Standard and Advance search options allow you to locate music by genre, composers, country, work title, period, year of composition, instrument, music category, or name of artist.