Christmas Fest Program Notes

Major Composers

If you composer is a major figure in western art music (think Johann Sebastian Bach or William Mathias), you will like be able to find biographical material in Oxford Music Online or by searching for them in Catalyst with the word "biography," as shown below.

Contemporary and/or Less Well-Known Composers

Contemporary composers and arrangers can sometimes be tricky to research, particularly if they specialize in sacred music or educational music.  Good places to look for composer information include:

• the composer's professional website, which will usually have an "about" or "biography" page
• the music publisher's website, which often includes biographies for the composers whose music they publish
  • for example, composer bios from ECS Publishing
  • if the publisher's site does have a full list of available biographies, trying searching for the composer's name and the publisher's name to see if you can find the page that way. in the example below, I'm looking for the bio for Peter Maxwell Davies from his publishers, Boosey and Hawkes.

• Obituaries can be a useful source for birth and death dates, as well as important career information. If you suspect the composer is deceased within the past 10 years or so, you can also sometimes find obituaries online by searching their name and the word "obituary." Add the word "music" or "choir" or another musical term to help find the correct obituary. In the example below, I'm looking for an obituary for Kenneth Jennings, former faculty at St. Olaf College, who passed away in 2015. Note that there are many Ken Jennings obituaries who are not for the person I'm looking for!

Books About St. Olaf Ensembles

We have several books about the St. Olaf Music Department and its ensembles, which might include relevant information about Ole composers. These books include:

Researching Ole Composers in College Archives

If your composer is an Ole, either a faculty member or an alum, you may be able to find information about them from College Archives.  Some potentially useful research tools from the Archives include:

• the digitized issues of the Manitou Messenger and the Olaf Messenger
• FRAM (Find Records and Archival; Materials), the main catalog for College Archives