Research Guides: Music: How to locate scores & recordings

Useful information

To find a score or recording of a particular musical work using the Search@UW search tool:

Enter the name of the composer or piece of work and the term score or recording in the search box. Then refine your results by selecting the option "--Books and Media@UWRF" e.g., "Bach AND scores"

To find a score or recording of a particular musical work using the University Library's online catalog you will need to include information about the following:

Composer’s name -
1. Last, first, and middle (or middle initial) if at all possible.
2. Think about alternative transliterations if the name comes from a language that uses an alphabet other than the Roman alphabet, e.g., Cyrillic, Hebrew, Chinese, etc..
Title of the work in its original language, e.g., The Marriage of Figaro = Le nozze di Figaro; B Minor Mass = Messe in H-Moll; Quartet for the End of Time = Quatuor pour la fin du temps.
Alternative titles or nicknames, such as "Moonlight Sonata" or "Jupiter" Symphony.
Is the piece part of a larger work? For example, an aria from a particular opera, e.g., "Quando m'en vo" = "Musetta's Waltz Song" from Puccini's La Boheme OR "No One Is Alone" from Sondheim's Into the Woods.
Nationality of the composer. This helps determine your search terms, for example:
1. piano = Klavier (German) = clavier (French, technically, "keyboard")
2. violin = Geige (German) = Violon (French)
3. viola = Bratsche = alto
4. double bass = Kontrabass (German) = Contrebasse (French)
5. bassoon = Fagott (German) = basson (French) = fagotto (Italian)
6. oboe = hautbois (French)
7. percussion battery = Schlagzeug (German) = batterie (French)
8. string quartet = Streichquartett (German) = quatuor a cordes (French)
Numbers associated with the work, such as sequence, opus, or thematic catalog numbers. Examples of some common thematic catalog numbers include:
1. "BWV" = Bach Werke Verzeichnis (J.S. Bach)
2. "D" = Deutsch (Schubert)
3. "Hob." = Hoboken (F.J. Haydn)
4. "K" = Kochel (Mozart)
5. "R" = Ryom (Vivaldi).
6. **You can often find thematic catalog numbers using the Libraries' catalog or the "works" section at the end of composer entries in The New Grove Dictionary (REF ML100 .N48 2001).
Key signature or voice type/range.
Instrumentation (or original instrumentation of work).
Score format that you desire, e.g., full or conductor's score, mini-score, vocal score, piano reduction.

Where can I find this info?

UWRF Library Catalog
Just doing a simple keyword search using information you already know can yield helpful information.

Oxford Music Online This link opens in a new window
A gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. The cornerstone of Oxford Music Online, Grove Music Online, has been completely redesigned with a number of functional enhancements and new content. Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music (2002), which offers more than 8,000 articles on composers, performers, conductors, individual works, instruments and notation, forms and genres; The Oxford Dictionary of Music, Second Edition, Revised (2006) will similarly supplement Grove's more extensive coverage with content geared toward undergraduates and general users. Oxford Music Online is also pleased to feature Colin Larkin's landmark Encyclopedia of Popular Music — online for the first time. A comprehensive reference work devoted exclusively to popular music, EPM is the authoritative biographical encyclopedia of rock, pop, and jazz artists, covering popular music from 1900 to present.

Garland Encyclopedia Online
The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online is the first comprehensive online resource devoted to music research of all the world's peoples. More than 9,000 pages of material, combined with entries by more than 700 expert contributors from all over the world, make this the most complete body of work focused on world music. This release includes 1,209 essays and images from 10 sources and hundreds of audio examples.
African American Music Reference
African American Music Reference will bring together 50,000 pages of text reference, biographies, chronologies, sheet music, images, lyrics, liner notes, and discographies which chronicle the diverse history and culture of the African American experience through music. The database is constantly expanding to include comprehensive coverage of blues, jazz, spirituals, civil rights songs, slave songs, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, gospel, and other forms of black American musical expression.

Music Online: Classical Scores Library This link opens in a new window
a series of four volumes with a mission to provide a reliable and authoritative source for scores of the classical canon, as well as a resource for the discovery of lesser-known contemporary works. The collections encompass all major classical musical genres and time periods from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. With full, study, piano, and vocal scores, this comprehensive collection will enhance the study of music history, performance, composition and theory for a variety of scholars

Now What a Time: Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals, 1938 to 1943
Consists of approximately one hundred sound recordings, primarily blues and gospel songs, and related documentation from the folk festival at Fort Valley State College (now Fort Valley State University), Fort Valley, Georgia.