A continually updated list of blogs about music performance, history, theory, and education. Contact us at the library if you have additions to suggest!
Studying music history or musicology? Have you encountered the Oxford History of Western Music? Check out The Taruskin Challenge, a blog documenting two graduate students' analysis of this monumental (and controversial) work.
Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, has a highly engaging blog about a range of issues in the classical music scene called The Rest is Noise. It shares its title with his fantastic, very readable book about 20th century music, available at Talbott: ML197 .R733 2007
He also has a lengthy blogroll of other music-related reads.
The Library of Congress' In the Muse is a great way to find out about highlights of the Library's vast performing arts collections.
British newspaper The Guardian maintains an active site on popular, classical and jazz music news, with lots of streaming media. So do the New York Times and National Public Radio.
"The Life and TImes of a Musical Virus" is a chronicle for "anyone with a serious interest in the history and/or theory of popular music, jazz, rock, country, the "world music" phenomenon, the changing face of contemporary "folk" music and/or, last but not least, "kitsch," . . . I've begun posting my thoughts, along with some very provocative musical examples, on my (long neglected) blog, Music 000001." - Victoria Grauer, blogger, Pittsburgh, PA (6/6/2013)
This very cool multimedia site is about Jacob Obrecht's 1497 mass. A Dutch vocal group has attempted to recreate its original performance in modern-day Belgium. You can listen to the mass and follow along on an annotated score. It's a great lesson in 15th century notation and performance.
Consider the life of a 21st century modernist composer who doubles as a taxi driver through this short documentary about Christopher Fulkerson.
Sinfinimusic is a new website that’s here to help you explore classical music, whether you’re new to the genre, already something of an expert or just somewhere in between.
Playlists, podcasts, news from the field, and a myriad of other content, which is editorially independent. Music and releases from various record labels, artists and venues are covered.
American Cantorate will be for those interested in Jewish Music, Ethnomusicology, Musicology, Music Theory, Cantors and Synagogue Musicians, Jewish Studies, Religious Studies, and American Studies.
This site contains all the raw data of the 1984-86 NEH-funded project “History of the American Cantorate,” directed by Mark Slobin.
• over 100 listenable oral history interviews of cantors
• the listenable 93-cantor core sample of sung selections of 8 liturgical texts, a first in Jewish music studies;
• the questionnaire survey responses of hundreds of cantors and lay leaders;
• letters solicited from rabbis about working with cantors;
• research reports and data summaries commissioned for the project;
• Ongoing addition of archival documentation of the American cantorate.