Basic Music Research Tools

The standard biographical dictionary of music. Primarily covers figures from the western classical tradition and includes composers, performers, and scholars. Witty, engaging, lively writing. Online within the Classical Music Library database.

This standard German language music encyclopedia, often called simply 'MGG,' is a reference work of the highest scholarly quality. Available only in German but still useful even for those with a rudimentary command of the language. Some illustrations are in color. The MGG English language Website [http://www.mgg-online.com/english/E_index.htm] is a useful introduction to this work.

ONLINE: Through Research Port as Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online. Intended to be a comprehensive English language source for information about world music and the field of ethnomusicology. Organized by geographical location. Volume 10 covers general perspectives and reference tools for world music.

A substantial, comprehensive reference to popular music. Since the first edition, published in 1992, this work has doubled in size.

A handy one-volume dictionary of musical instrument names. Excellent descriptions of the instruments, but no pictures. Cross-cultural in coverage with cross references to different names of the same instruments.

The latest edition of the most widely-used one-volume English language dictionary of music. Exhaustive coverage of the western classical tradition and basic coverage of world music, but little coverage of popular idioms. No biographies of musicians and composers.

A dictionary of short biographical sketches of composers and musicians. Covers primarily figures in the western classical tradition, but includes popular and jazz figures as well.

The most important English-language encyclopedia. The online version contains the full text of the 2nd edition as well as the full text of The New Grove Dictionary of Opera and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. There a number of offshoots to the print version that may be of interest to those studying a particular genre or aspect of music.

An older resource, but still very useful for identifying musicians and composers of earlier ages who may have dropped out of the repertory.