Music 345B: American Music

Primary resources are materials -- artworks, books, maps, letters, concert reviews, blogpost, etc. -- created during the time period you are investigating. They are eyewitness accounts of the events at hand.

Personal writings include memoirs, letters, diaries, and autobiographies. As you use these sources, remember to ask yourself, "Did the author originally intend this for publication?" People self-edit their writing when they know it will go public, so what you read in a memoir and what you read in a personal letter might be different.

To find personal writings in Catalyst, go to the advanced search option.

In the first search box, enter the name of the person you want to learn more about.

In the second box, add the kind of material you want: memoir, letters, correspondence, diary, autobiography.

Pro Tip: use an asterisk (*) to create truncated search terms. These tell Catalyst (and other databases) to search for part of a word. For example, to search both diary and diaries, tell Catalyst to search for diar*

Example 1: A search for the letters of American songwriter Carrie Jacobs Bond...

...brings up a published collection of her letters.

Example 2: A search for the diaries of American composer Ned Rorem...

...yields the many diaries he published in his lifetime!

It's very common for editors to collect a variety of different primary source readings into an anthology.  There are two main ways to find such anthologies in Catalyst -- by subject or by title.  Both versions work better for broad topics, like "Opera" or "American music," than narrow ones like a specific composer.

SUBJECT SEARCHING

In the advanced search function of Catalyst, enter your general search topic in the first box. Then set the second search box to "Subject" and add the word "sources"...

...to get a list of books of source readings on that topic.

TITLE SEARCHING

Often, anthologies of source readings will actually have the words "source" or "documents" or "reader" in their titles.

In the advanced search function of Catalyst, set the "Material Type" to "Book."  Enter your main search term in the first search box.  Then set the second search box to "title" and enter a term such as: source* (include the asterisk), documents (make sure it is plural), or reader.

The asterisk makes Catalyst search for anything beginning with "source-" : source, sources, sourcebook, etc. Using the plural documents will sift out titles that don't have anything to do with primary sources.

Here's a search for books about music with the word "reader" in the title...

...which brings up books like this!

Sometimes it is useful to see a composer's manuscripts or sketches to gain a deeper understanding of the the piece was written.  While St. Olaf Library does not have many actual manuscripts, we do have access to facsimiles of those manuscripts.  Facsimiles are high-quality reproductions intended for research.

To look for facsimiles of a composer's manuscripts, add the term "facsimile" to your search.  Note that sometimes you will not find a full reproduction of the score; it is very common for later printed editions to include one or two photographs of the piece in their introductions.

Example: This search for facsimiles of W.A. Mozart...

...yields a facsimile version of Mozart's personal thematic catalog of his music. (A thematic catalog lists the main musical themes in notation so you can find a piece by its tune if you don't remember the name.)