Music Subject Guide

St. Olaf Libraries and IT and the Department of Music strive to include a variety of voices within their collections and programming. 

The resources listed below include local projects designed to help you identify and experience music from underrepresented voices.

These resources are created by and for the St. Olaf musical community.

• Database for Historically Underrepresented Composers -- Featuring 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.
• Amplifying Composers of Color -- a CURI summer research project led by Dr. Emery Stephens; see other music CURI projects here
• SomaliSongs -- a growing website documenting Somali songs, led by Dr. Rehanna Kheshgi

• Karen's Giant Spreadsheet of Composer Diversity Websites -- a list of 60+ websites Karen consults  when selecting new music by composers from historically underrepresented groups; please email Karen if you have suggestions of new sites to add or if links are broken.

Some of the sites Karen consults frequently from this spreadsheet include:

• Institute for Composer Diversity -- click the "search" button at the top to access their databases for composers, art songs, choral works, band works, orchestral works, and more.
• Diversity in Brass Music from Last Row Music -- lists of repertoire by woman composers and by Black composers
• No Broken Links -- Google spreadsheets for woodwind repertoire by composers from historically underrepresented groups
• Sphinx Catalogs  -- music for strings by Latin American composers
• A Seat at the Piano -- piano repertoire by BIPOC and woman composers
• Music By Black Composers -- repertoire lists of music by Black composers, currently strongest in string repertoire; see also their directories of living and historic Black composers
• SongHelix -- originally designed to track art songs by topic, it now also permits search by composer identities

• Alex Shapiro's Programming Resources -- includes pages on woman composers, LGBTQIA@s Composers, and Black, Latino, Asian, and Indian composers