In this guide you'll find links to a number of reference books, databases, and other online music resources. Please feel free to get in touch with the music librarian, Cara Barker, if you need more assistance. You can also use the "Ask Us" chat box in the lower right corner to talk with a reference library right now.
Background information and encyclopedias
Databases for finding articles
Streaming Music and scores
Identity and Diversity in New Music by
Identity and Diversity in New Music: The New Complexities aims to enrich the discussion of how musicians and educators can best engage with audiences, by addressing issues of diversity and identity that have played a vital role in the reception of new music, but have been little-considered to date. Marilyn Nonken offers an innovative theoretical approach that considers how the environments surrounding new music performances influence listeners' experiences, drawing on work in ecological psychology. Using four case studies of influential new music ensembles from across the twentieth century, she considers how diversity arises in the musical environment, its impact on artists and creativity, and the events and engagement it makes possible. Ultimately, she connects theory to practice with suggestions for how musicians and educators can make innovative music environments inclusive.
Contemporary Music: Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives by
This collection of essays and interviews addresses important theoretical, philosophical and creative issues in Western art music at the end of the twentieth- and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries. Edited by Max Paddison and Irène Deliège, the book offers a wide range of international perspectives from prominent musicologists, philosophers and composers, including Célestin Deliège, Pascal Decroupet, Richard Toop, Rudolf Frisius, Alastair Williams, Herman Sabbe, François Nicolas, Marc Jimenez, Anne Boissière, Max Paddison, Hugues Dufourt, Jonathan Harvey, and new interviews with Pierre Boulez, Brian Ferneyhough, Helmut Lachenmann, and Wolfgang Rihm. Part I is mainly theoretical in emphasis. Issues addressed include the historical rationalization of music and technology, new approaches to the theorization of atonal harmony in the wake of Spectralism, debates on the 'new complexity', the heterogeneity, pluralism and stylistic omnivorousness that characterizes music in our time, and the characterization of twentieth-century and contemporary music as a 'search for lost harmony'. The orientation of Part II is mainly philosophical, examining concepts of totality and inclusivity in new music, raising questions as to what might be expected from an autonomous contemporary musical logic, and considering the problem of the survival of the avant-garde in the context of postmodernist relativism. As well as analytic philosophy and cognitive psychology, critical theory features prominently, with theories of social mediation in music, new perspectives on the concept of musical material in Adorno's late aesthetic theory, and a call for 'an aesthetics of risk' in contemporary art as a means 'to reassert the essential role of criticism, of judgment, and of evaluation as necessary conditions to bring about a real public debate on the art of today'. Part III offers creative perspectives, with new essays and interviews from important contemporary composers who have mad
Women of Influence in Contemporary Music by
In Women of Influence in Contemporary Music: Nine American Composers, Michael K. Slayton has collected essays, which focus on women who have made significant contributions to American music: Elizabeth Austin, Susan Botti, Gabriela Lena Frank, Jennifer Higdon, Libby Larsen, Tania León, Cindy McTee, Marga Richter, and Judith Shatin. While these composers have much in common, not least of all dedication to their art, their individual stories reveal different impulses in American music. Their works reflect the shifting societal landscapes in the United States over the last seven decades, as well as different stylistic approaches to writing music. Each chapter includes a biography of the composer, an interview, and a detailed analysis of one major composition. The composers openly reflect on their individual journeys, in which they have discovered respective musical languages and have found success during different times in history. Because few music books focus solely on female composers, Women of Influence in Contemporary Music offers a rare glimpse into the styles and attitudes of gifted women and their work.
No Such Thing as Silence by
First performed at the midpoint of the twentieth century, John Cage's 4'33", a composition conceived of without a single musical note,is among the most celebrated and ballyhooed cultural gestures in the history of modern music. A meditation on the act of listening and the nature of performance, Cage's controversial piece became the iconic statement of the meaning of silence in art and is a landmark work of American music.
Modern Music and After by
Over three decades, Paul Griffiths's survey has remained the definitive study of music since the Second World War; this fully revised and updated edition re-establishes Modern Music and After as the preeminent introduction to the music of our time.
How to listen to modern music without earplugs: the average music lover's guide to serious music of the 20th century by 
Masterworks of 20th-Century Music by
"Masterworks of 20th-Century Music" introduces more than one hundred of the greatest compositions by world-renowned composer that have entered the standard orchestral repertory. The author surveyed dozens of major American orchestras to focus on those works that an average audience member is most likely to hear. Concertgoers who are intimated by the modern repertoire finally have a single resource that will help them understand and enjoy it. Like an educated guide, he walks the listener through the piece, explaining how all the elements come together to form a unified whole. This book serves the general reader interested in 20th-century music, plus students, teachers, and scholars.
Struggling to Define a Nation: American music and the twentieth century by
In an engaging blend of music analysis and cultural critique, Charles Hiroshi Garrett examines a dazzling array of genres--including art music, jazz, popular song, ragtime, and Hawaiian music--and numerous well-known musicians, such as Charles Ives, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, and Irving Berlin. Garrett argues that rather than a single, unified vision, an exploration of the past century reveals a contested array of musical perspectives on the nation, each one advancing a different facet of American identity through sound.
Twentieth-Century Chamber Music by
Twentieth Century Chamber Music combines a chronological overview of 20th-century chamber music and the major composers in the style, with information on a wide selection of chamber works.
French Music, Culture, and National Identity, 1870-1939 by
Here, essays from musicologists, historians, art historians and literary scholars reconsider the relationship of Debussy, Gaugin, Jolivet, Zola, and other great French creative artists to cultural and political trends (for example, the rise of the press, nationalism, etc.) during the Third Republic
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