Music-Related Databases Guide

Hymn tunes were one of European classical music’s chief conduits to American audiences through the mid-19th century. Hymnnodic adaptations of the work of Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and others appeared by the hundreds, all but a few forgotten today. 278 of these tunes—unearthed, identified, and edited for modern use—are gathered in this Anthology of scores and piano recordings.

AmericanClassicalHymns.com was developed in tandem with the book Gems of Exquisite Beauty: How Hymnody Carried Classical Music to America (Oxford University Press, 2020), the first in-depth historical exploration of this repertoire and its creators.

Published by the UCLA Music Library in eScholarship, the Contemporary Music Score Collection includes the digital, open access scores from the Contemporary Score Edition series, the first open access edition of new music published by a library, and scores from the Kaleidoscope 2020 Call for Scores, an open access collaboration with the UCLA Music Library.

A Project of the Mozarteum Foundation Salzburg and The Packard Humanities Institute, this database include high quality PDFs of the Neue Mozart Ausgabe.

The English Heritage Music Series has been created to ensure that previously unpublished pieces from the “renaissance” in English music (generally agreed to have started in the late Victorian period, beginning roughly in 1880) are preserved, are accessible for scholarly research and, most importantly, are available for performance by future generations. Its mission is to source non-engraved/out-of-print English composer compositions that are in the U.S. public domain; preserve these compositions through the preparation of performance scores using notation software; and provide open Internet access to the scores to facilitate study, performance and sharing of performance material (program notes, audio, reviews, etc.)

The HathiTrust Women Composers Collection consists of digitized sheet music for approximately 3,000 musical works by more than 700 women composers. Most date from the 19th- and early 20th-centuries, with a few pieces from the 18th century. Some of the published scores include annotations by the composer, while there are also several hundred in manuscript form. The originals are from the University of Michigan Music Library, which purchased most of the collection in 1980 from a British antiquarian. Visitors can sort the materials by author name, date, or title using the drop-down "Sort by" feature above the listings. Most of the musical compositions featured in the collection are songs and solo piano pieces, although choral, orchestral, dramatic, and chamber music are also present in the collection. About 80 percent of the collection is available full-text through HathiTrust, which means that the music can be downloaded and printed. In addition to being of interest to musicians and music scholars, the covers of many of the pieces are illustrated and some include ornate text, providing examples of 19th- and 20th-century graphic design.

A comprehensive index of over 1 million hymn texts, hymn tunes, and hymnals, with information on authors, composers, lyrics, and scores. Search or browse hymns by title, tune, meter, key, scripture reference, and more; find hymns that relate to a particular lectionary week, topic, or part of worship, and hymnals that have been published by particular denominations; and search, view, and visualize Hymnary data in creative ways.

The Sheet Music Consortium provides tools and services that promote access to and use of online sheet music collections by scholars, students, and the general public. The Sheet Music Consortium is a group of libraries working toward the goal of building an open collection of digitized sheet music using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. Harvested metadata about sheet music in participating collections is hosted by UCLA Digital Library Program, which provides an access service via this metadata to sheet music records at the host libraries. Data providers have chosen to catalog their sheet music in different ways, but a large proportion of the original sheets in participating collections has been digitized, allowing users direct access to the music itself and in many cases covers and advertisements that offer evidence of the cultural context in which the songs were published. This project has been generously supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Founded in 1997, this is the home of interchange between performers and scholars interested in art song by African-American composers. Here you will find information and links to assist with your discovery of our contribution to song. The mission of this resource is to promote and Uplift the contributions made by African-Americans to art song, be they composers, performers or scholars; serve the needs of scholars, teachers, and performers seeking information about African-American art song; share information and repertoire between teachers, scholars, and performers; and encourage performance and scholarship related to African-American art song.

The American Viola Society presents a small volunteer research effort to document works by underrepresented composers that involve the viola as a significant voice. This project was inspired by a collective effort towards diversity, equity, and inclusion in the world of viola repertoire, and users can submit works for inclusion in the database.

From resource's "About" page: "Art Song Augmented is an online forum devoted to art songs by underrepresented composers whose music has been marginalized. The site aims to share this music with a wide audience by providing high-quality recordings, commentary, scores, and other resources for those interested in learning more about this repertoire. An equally important goal is to bring together scholars, performers, students, and lay listeners—to create a community committed to celebrating this extraordinary and understudied body of music."

From the resource's landing page: "Listen free-of-charge to a growing collection of rare and delightful art songs. Each composition has been lovingly resurrected from the depths of art song history, with most of them from previously unknown composers. The songs are performed in one take to give them a 'live' feeling - by soprano Hélène Lindqvist and pianist Philipp Vogler. All art work also by the duo.'

The Institute for Composer Diversity, winner of the 2018 ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Media/Internet Award and housed at the State University of New York at Fredonia, is dedicated to the celebration, education, and advocacy of music created by composers from historically underrepresented groups through database resources and programming analysis. Their award-winning Composer Diversity Database allows users to discover over 4000 composers of historically underrepresented genders, racial, ethnic, and cultural heritages, and sexual orientations. You can search by composer name, living or deceased, common large and small ensemble genres, racial, ethnic, or cultural demographics, and by location (city, state, and country).

Made available by the University fo Utah. From the resource's "About" page: "There has never been a simple way to search through the vast number of art songs by poet, date of composition, thematic links, keywords, or utility. SongHelix brings this ever-evolving information available into one searchable location. It is an online tool that enables users to search through the vast repertoire of art songs in order to find just the right piece. The website’s immediate purpose is to give singers and teachers the primary online tool for finding related repertoire. A secondary, and broader purpose will be to help to revitalize the form of voice recital by allowing for creative programming through novel associations. The website makes it possible for the user to search song repertoire by terms customarily found in print reference, but SongHelix’s real power is the ability to search by “Feature” as well. When searching within the “Feature” category the user will be able to discover aspects of the songs such as: dreams, stages of life, moving water, Greek mythology, particular metaphors, etc."

A developing project, the Vocal Music Instrumentation Index currently includes 1,699 movements from J. S. Bach cantatas and allows users browse by instrumentation and text. This database includes multi-lingual full-text search so users can search by text in English, French, German, and Italian. Coming soon are more works by J.S. Bach, and pieces by Mozart, Handel, Telemann, Rossini, and more.

This online database of wind literature includes contributions and information from band directors/conductors, students, and wind band enthusiasts. This resource could be helpful for searching for new repertoire!