Music-Related Databases Guide

The University of Pennsylvania Libraries provides digital access to more than 2,500 items from the collection of Marian Anderson, one of the most celebrated singers of the twentieth century. The body of primary sources in the collection — including letters, diaries, journals, interviews, recital programs, and private recordings — spans the Philadelphia-born contralto’s six-decade career as a concert singer and advocate for social justice. This website simplifies the discovery of the digital content through finding aids and browseable listings of scrapbooks, notebooks, diaries, photographs, interviews, and recordings.

This annotated database includes correspondence by Mozart and his family, and has been translated into several languages. The publisher of this resource is progressively adding new letters from the approximately 1,400 letter written by Mozart and his family. In Mozart's Words provides easy access to information about people, places, and musical works referenced in the letters, as well as references to background materials like reviews, newspapers, documents, objects, paintings, engravings, and books that will help the researcher gain context. Each record links out to a digitized version of the manuscript item.

This digital collection features over fifty of the Library of Congress's chant manuscripts (e.g., antiphonaries, graduals, processionals, etc.) containing music intended for use during the rituals of the Roman Catholic Mass and Divine Office. Chronologically, these rare primary sources span a period of great paleographical change from the tenth through seventeenth centuries: from poorly executed fragments to exquisitely crafted codices, these materials range in format and size from single leaves to entire books – both pocket-sized and immense choirbooks measuring over three feet tall. Their musical contents document the creation and development of the modern-day staff from one to five staff lines, the introduction of clefs, the use of staffless (chironomic) and heightened (diastemic) neumes and eventually black square notation, and so much more. Most visually alluring are the skillfully crafted bindings of leather, brass and wood used to encase the gatherings of thick vellum leaves that periodically reveal breathtaking illuminated initials. These unique treasures present a valuable cross-section of liturgical chants copied in diverse regions throughout Europe – from a 10th-century Swiss monastery in St. Gall to a 12th-century Cistercian abbey in Lower Austria to a 16th century Spanish Cathedral.

This Library of Congress digital collection provides access to approximately 2,000 books on music published before 1800.

This page lists online databases that search primary sources in arts, humanities, history, social sciences, etc. Most are large, licensed databases accessible by University of Minnesota students, staff and faculty, and are also accessible to visitors using computers in libraries on the Twin Cities campus. They include sources like newspapers, artifacts, art, songs, images and are often facsimiles or reproductions. To identify resources with specific subject coverage search this page using a single, broad keyword (Some examples: film, history, music, news, political, politics, women).