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Wayfinders for our collections, tools, and servicesMusic research online: essential tools to explore Western art music: Get an overview in music encyclopedias
Sources to help you construct an outline for research into a historical periods, genres, composers, instruments, and theoretical topics
Music encyclopedias
The first step in exploring a new topic is to get a reliable overview.
Music encyclopedias provide scholarly coverage of a wide variety of topics. When reading an entry, note names of composers, important dates and places, and titles of significant musical works. You can use this information to effectively search the library catalog and article databases.
- Grove music onlineGrove Music Online is always a good place to start your exploration of a new topic. This suite of databases from Oxford University Press includes Grove Music Online, The Oxford Companion to Music, and The Oxford Dictionary of Music.
- Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart : allgemeine Enzyklopädie der MusikMGG is the standard German-language music encyclopedia. Somewhat more current than Grove, it also provides a handy Google Translate tool.
