Writing Program Notes
Resources
- Grove Music Online (Oxford Music Online)Using Grove can help you to find further resources, beyond just biographical information! Search for your composer, then scroll to the bibliography. Look over that and see if any of the other sources they used sound useful for you.
- Oxford History of Western MusicOxford History of Western Music is a great resource for information on Western art music.
- DRAMBeyond streaming audio, DRAM contains liner notes and essays that could be great tools for your research.
- Texts of Lieder and Art SongsAs the title states, this resource contains the texts of lieder and art songs.
- Naxos Music LibraryStreaming audio that also may include some biographical information on your composer.
- Garland Encyclopedia of World MusicThis would be a wonderful resource for anything world music-related.
- JSTORContains full-text articles
- Academic Search PremierContains full-text articles
Some ideas of physical items to use...
Composer biographies
Scores
Dissertations
Books about writing about music, like the two resources below:
A Short Guide to Writing about Music by Call Number: ML3797 .B45 2007 (Talbott Library)ISBN: 0321187911"Written in a clear and conversational style, A Short Guide to Writing About Music,2e examines a wide range of writing assignments for music courses at all levels of the undergraduate curriculum. Employing a variety of writing samples as a means to illustrate effective writing, this brief and inexpensive text teaches writers how to deftly research and write about music." -- From Back Cover
Writing about Music by Call Number: ML3797 .W56 2009 (Talbott Library)ISBN: 0136157785"Helping users write clear, convincing, persuasive prose on musical topics, this practical guide focuses on general writing issues as well as special challenges of writing about music-with clear, step-by-step explanations of the process of writing a paper. Updated to reflect the latest research methodology, resources, and technology, it continues to offer strong coverage on research, organization, drafting and editing-and includes a thorough section on basic writing skills. Contains complete chapters on writing about music, analysis and research, getting started, writing a research paper (from choosing a topic through outlining, writing the draft, editing and revising), questions of format, other kinds of writing projects (i.e., seminar presentations, concert reports, program notes), writing styles, and common writing problem. Covers the latest musicological research and new resources for researching both print and electronic publications. Discusses writing papers on a PC, and provides a sample paper in the appendix that illustrates matters of format and discusses the events in the musical work. For writers." -- Amazon Description
Both Talbott Library and Moore Library a large collection of CDs and DVDs of recorded performances available to check out, including the liner notes!
To limit your search to CDs and DVDs in the catalog:
First, search for your piece in the catalog.
After searching for your piece, look at the left side of the screen. Under the area that says "Refine by", you should find "Format". Under "Format", click on "Music Recording".
This will limit your search to musical records!
Now, this will show more than just the CDs and DVDs in the collection. So, from here we will need to limit our search a little bit further.
If you scroll past the section for "Library", you will find a section titled "Location". Click where it says "more >" at the bottom of the list of locations.
This shows a bunch of different locations within the libraries that hold sound recordings! If you want a physical item that we can check out at Talbott, select the option for "Talbott Media" and click "Apply". This limits the search to only items in the Talbott Media collection.
Now, you have limited your search to music recordings and to the Talbott Media collection!
Take some time to browse the records from your search.
Let's say that the image below shows the record CD you are most interested in checking out:
Take a look at the record. If you look under where it says "Items" on the record, you will see that it lists the location, call number, status, etc. of the item. In order to retrieve the item, you will need the call number! Write down the call number and take it up to the circulation desk. From there, the staff member will retrieve the item for you to check out.