Music research online: essential tools to explore Western art music: Find relevant articles
Sources to help you construct an outline for research into a historical periods, genres, composers, instruments, and theoretical topics
Start with online bibliographies
- Oxford Bibliographies OnlineLists of articles and more on composers and various musical topics.
These article databases will bring up full text results
Article databases are commercial products and may look different from one another, but all have the following in common.
You can
- choose full text when available
- narrow results to "scholarly" or "peer-reviewed"
- read the abstract to determine if the article is what you want
- limit by language
- follow subject links in the records to guide your exploration
Articles that appear as citations only (no full text link) can be requested through Interlibrary Borrowing.
- RILM abstracts of music literature (Full Text)Includes articles, book reviews, and much more. RILM provides citations, and links out to JSTOR when full text is available.
- The music index onlineA broad range of subjects are indexed, covering musicological or organological topics, plus book reviews, record reviews, first performances, and obituaries.
- RIPM retrospective indexFull text of historical journals, 1800-1950.
- JSTORJSTOR is a multi-topic database of full text articles. RILM will link to an article in JSTOR if it is available.
