- St. Olaf Libraries
- Research Guides
- Music Subject Guide
- Dictionaries and Encyclopedias
Music Subject Guide
Learn how to search for music in our collection, access streaming media, begin basic research, and more!
LibKey Nomad
Research and Instruction Librarian for Music & Fine Arts
Karen Olson
she/her/hers
Dictionaries and Encyclopedias
Oxford Music OnlineFull-text collection of reference works on music across genres and eras.
The Garland Encyclopedia of World MusicFull-text encyclopedia covering music around the world and throughout history. Includes regional overviews, information on musical genres and practices, and images (photographs, drawings, maps, and musical examples).
African American Music ReferenceFull-text reference resource on African American music, covering blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, gospel, and other genres.- Classical Music Reference LibraryFull-text reference resource on all genres of classical music, medieval to contemporary.
Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the WorldCall Number: Music Library Reference ML102.P66 C66 2003Includes volumes on "Media, Industry, and Society," Performance and Production," "Caribbean and Latin America," "North America," "Asia and Oceania," "Africa and the Middle East", and "Europe." AVAILABLE IN PRINT; SOME VOLUMES ALSO ONLINE--SEE "RELATED TITLE" LINKS IN CATALYST RECORD.- Terminorum Musicae Index Septem Linguis RedactusCall Number: Music Library Reference ML108 .T476Dictionary of musical terms in German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, and Russian. AVAILABLE IN PRINT ONLY.
Use these reference sources to find biographical information as well as introductions and overviews to music topics. You can find many more theater reference books by searching in Catalyst using keywords for your general subject AND the phrase (dictionary OR encyclopedia), like this:
Other Useful Music Reference
Daniels' Orchestral Music OnlineFull-text reference work on orchestral music. Users can search by composer, title, keyword, duration, instrumentation, chorus type, or soloist.- Percussion OrchestrationsA database of timpani and percussion requirements for orchestral, operatic and contemporary repertoire, currently containing 4317 works by 462 different composers.
- IPA SourceISBN: 9783961100903International Phonetic Alphabet transcriptions and literal translations of opera arias, art songs, and Latin sacred texts.
- Musical Theater SongsMusicalTheaterSongs.com’s interface lets you enter up to 20-plus parameters (voice type, character age, range, ease for accompanist, descriptive characteristics, etc.) to generate a list of songs tailored to your needs from an ever-growing database of songs.
