Find writings on music

Use this page to find literature about music for your research projects and assignments: full-text journal articles, article abstracts, e-books, digital collections, and more.

• RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text
  • Comprehensive scholarly bibliography of writings on music, international in scope, from 1900 to the present
  • Covers a wide range of publications: journal articles, conference proceedings, books, dissertations, and essay collections
  • Includes full-text content from many leading journals, magazines, and newsletters
• Music Periodicals Database (formerly IIMP - International Index to Music Periodicals)
  • Guide to scholarly and popular music journals for a wide range of subjects
  • Emphasis on articles from 1996 to the present; indexing for certain journals from 1874
  • Includes full-text content for many journals
• RIPM Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals with Full Text (1760-1966)
  • Online access to extensive collections of rare, primary source music periodicals from 1760 to 1966
  • Includes specialized music journals selected from more than 20 countries worldwide
  • Citations and full text available
  • Provides an almost daily chronicle of musical activities over a period of 200 years
• RIPM Jazz Periodicals
  • Online access to over 100 American jazz periodicals published over the last century
  • Coverage includes general, discographical, critical research, and entertainment industry journals
  • Advanced search allows for limiting the results to images and discographical entries
  • Journal browse feature available
• Music Index
  • Guide to music periodicals and literature
  • Coverage includes articles about music, musicians, instruments, and the music industry (popular and classical)
  • Good for finding reviews of books, recordings, and performances; news articles; and obituaries
  • Some digital content (1970 to present)
• JSTOR: Advanced Search (or Basic Search)
  • Provides full-text access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources in 75 disciplines (including music)
  • Advanced search function allows users to filter by item type, language, publication date, journal or publication title, and discipline

• AES: Audio Engineering Society
  • Professional society devoted to audio technology, uniting audio engineers, creative artists, scientists, and students worldwide by promoting advances in audio and disseminating new knowledge and research
  • AES E-Library provides access to almost every AES paper published at a convention, conference or in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society from 1953 to the present
• Albert Schatz Collection of Opera Libretti (Library of Congress)
  • First and early editions of Italian, French, and German opera libretti from the 17th and 18th centuries
  • Collection contains more than 12,000 fully catalogued and digitized libretti
  • Object viewer allows users to zoom and download 
• Bibliographie des Musikschrifttums Online
  • An international and interactive bibliography of music literature
  • Includes monographs, articles and reviews from journals, Festschriften, conference proceedings, yearbooks, anthologies and essays from critical reports
  • Search interface available in German and English
• Canadian Encyclopedia
  • Bilingual digital encyclopedia of history, culture, and people in Canada
  • Includes former Encyclopedia of Music in Canada entries
  • Almost 20,000 articles written by expert contributors
  • Interactive features include curated content exhibits, interactive timelines, immediate updates of important events, and a user-generated content map that invites Canadians to share their stories
  • Offers a new learning centre for teachers and parents that contains classroom resources, quizzes, and themed study guides
• Canadian Music Periodical Index
  • Find citations to articles from hundreds of Canadian music journals, newsletters, and magazines
  • Discover articles on musical activity in Canada, from the late-19th century to 2010
• Concert Programmes
  • Search this database to find locations and descriptions of concert program collections held in European libraries, archives, and museums
  • Website provides links to other groups working in this area of documentation, and to a selection of online related projects
• Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive
  • Archival research resource for studying history of the film and entertainment industries
  • Coverage: 1880-2000
• Europeana
  • Provides access to millions of digitized books, music, and artworks from thousands of European archives, libraries, and museums 
  • Explore recordings, sheet music, instruments, and music-related collections 
  • Includes digital exhibitions, galleries, and blogs about music, instruments, and composers
• France: Musiques, Cultures, 1789-1918
  • A network of over 250 academics and librarians with interests in the music of the French long nineteenth century, linked by a JISC discussion group
  • Repository includes more than 3000 digitized, searchable texts relating to French music and ballet in the nineteenth century
  • Also provides access to bibliographical resources and work in progress
• Gallica, la bibliothèque numérique de la Bibliothèque nationale de France
  • Excellent resource for historical and archival research
  • Provides access to public-domain digital documents held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF)
  • Wide variety of formats included: books, newspapers, periodicals, scores, sound recordings, images, and more
• Google Scholar
  • Provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature
  • Search across many disciplines and sources, including journal articles, academic theses, books, and abstracts
  • Configure Google Scholar to access articles available through the Library
• Hathi Trust
  • A not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items
  • Offers reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law, computational access to the entire corpus for scholarly research, and other emerging services based on the combined collection 
  • Search the collection in several ways: catalogue record and full-text across the collection or within a single item
• Internet Archive
  • Digital collection of public domain materials, including archives and published media from university collections around the world
  • Includes sound recordings, scores, books, and other materials
  • Public domain materials can be downloaded
  • Offers full-text searching within documents and across the collection
• Music Online: Music Periodicals of the 19th Century (Alexander Street Press)
  • Collection of full-text periodicals depicting American musical life from 1838 to the early 1900s
  • Contains local and international news, reviews, editorials, sheet music, and advertisements
• Opening Night! Opera & Oratorio Premieres
  • Cross-index of data for more than 43,000 opera and oratorio premieres that received a public performance between the years 1589 and the present
  • Historical notes provide detailed descriptions for each category, including content parameters and exceptions, and notes on forms of personal and geographical name entries
  • Search by title, composer, librettist, or keyword
• Oxford Bibliographies: Music
  • Book-length bibliographies provide an authoritative guide to current scholarship, containing original commentary and annotations
  • Interface guides users directly to relevant information; provides personalized citation lists and links to full-text print and online content
  • Bibliographies are written and reviewed by academic experts
• Oxford Handbooks Online: Music

  • Handbooks offer thorough introductions to topics and a critical survey of the current state of scholarship

  • Covers a wide range of music research including historical musicology, ethnomusicology, theory, pedagogy, dance, and technology
• RIdIM (Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musicale)
  • An international index of visual sources of music, dance, theatre, and opera
  • Wide scope of visual documents and artifacts, including architecture, performance art, videos as well as paintings, drawings, and sculptures
  • RIdIM database contains descriptions and images of visual objects; search for images using controlled vocabulary terms or keywords (e.g., names of artists and musicians, musical instruments, titles, art media, date of creation, and owning institutions)
  • Images are often included unless protected by copyright
• Rock's Backpages Library
  • Comprehensive online database of pop music writing; comprises a wide collection of more than 40,000 primary-source full-text articles from the music and mainstream press from the 1950s to the present as well as hundreds of audio interviews
  • Archive covers all types of popular music from the 1950s to the present 
  • Articles are full text and fully searchable (by artist, date, genre, keyword, etc.)
  • Sources include American and British publications

• Digital Resources for Musicology (DRM)
  • Created by the Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities, at Stanford University.
  • Links to open access repositories, including digitized music manuscripts, digital score reprints, genre based projects, and more
• MusRef: Music and dance bibliography and reference (BYU)
  • Access an online bibliography of music and dance bibliographies and reference sources (both print and online)
  • Provides helpful guides on how to find appropriate research materials using reference sources: Basic introductions to reference tools
  • Contains a series of in-depth compilations of research, ranging from an exploration of a composer's life and works to narrowly defined pedagogical topics and specialized historical perspectives on music
  • The blog regularly reviews freely accessible music and dance reference sources
• Musicologie.org : Références en musicologie
  • Publishes articles about music topics, including philosophy, history, and theory, as well as biographies, encyclopedic articles, and reviews of concerts and recordings
  • Provides access to practical resources and announcements about concerts and music conferences
  • Articles and documentation on the site are freely accessible but the content is protected by copyright
• Virtual Library of Musicology (ViFaMusik)
  • Portal for music and musicology, providing links to numerous sites offering scholarly research and online resources
  • Advanced search options enable simultaneous searching across multiple catalogues

• CINAHL Plus with Full Text
• Cochrane Library
• MEDLINE (Ovid)
• PsycINFO 1987- (Ovid)
• PubMed (McGill)
• Scopus
• Web of Science

• McGill users only
• Open access resource
• Free resource
• In-library use
• Catalogue record