FYS 120: Race in 20th Century Music
LibKey Nomad
Research and Instruction Librarian for Music & Fine Arts
Finding Scores in Catalyst
As a musician, you'll probably want to look at musical scores! It can be tricky to get Catalyst to show you scores instead of books. This video demonstrates how to use filters to tell Catalyst what formats you want.
Database for Historically Underrepresented Composers
Catalyst is not good at searching for scores based on a composer's race, ethnicity, gender, or other identifying characteristics.
St. Olaf alum Raina Swanson Edson has created a database of scores in our collection by female and BIPOC composers. Use the database below to search for pieces, then follow the links back to Catalyst to see the records there.
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Database for Historically Underrepresented Composers This link opens in a new windowFeaturing scores by BIPOC and women composers, the Database for Historically Underrepresented Composers complements Catalyst by providing additional metadata to make it easier to search by a composer's identity and to discover scores by instrumentation, genre, language, and more.
Digital Scores
Digitized scores are wonderful resources, but how you can use them depends on what platform supports them and whether or not they are still in copyright. Generally speaking, pre-1928 materials should be in the public domain and easily downloaded.
Digital Collections at the Library of Congress -- A wide array of digitized materials, including early American sheet music, from the Library of Congress. Use the menus on the left side of the home screen to guide your research. Also a fantastic site for other kinds of primary sources!
Internet Archive -- Many libraries use IA to host their digital collections, including sheet music. Public domain materials are freely available, but you can create a free account to digitally borrow materials that are still in copyright.
The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music (Johns Hopkins University) -- 30,000+ pieces of music, with a focus on popular American music spanning the period 1780 to 1960. Images of the printed music are available if the music is in the public domain.