Music History

A starting point for Music History research in Western's Music Library.

Music History Journals - browse the shelves

While many music journals now offer online content, many older journals are only available in print. Check the Western Libraries Shared Library Catalogue by Journal Title to ascertain the location of back-runs of older journals.

ML1 = Music periodicals, published in the US

ML5 = Music periodicals published in Canada, or the UK

ML27 = Music periodicals published by a Society or an Association (e.g. JAMS, the NATS Journal of Singing)

Articles - Online

Grove Music Online
Check this for composers' biographies; scroll-down to the END of ANY article to find the bibliography (list of articles and books, listed oldest-newest). Large bibliographies may be organized by genre/era.
Music Index
Since 1949 the Music Index has been an invaluable resource for finding articles on music topics, whether in magazines, newspapers, or book chapters. Despite its roots as a CITATION INDEX, there are articles in PDF, and link-outs to subscribed articles via the "Get it at Western" icon.
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature
RILM is an ultra-scholarly resource for Music research. International and multilingual, RILM contains CITATIONS only, with brief English-language annotations. Serious music historians start with RILM.
RIPM: Retrospective Index to music periodicals (1800-1950)
RIPM provides access to CITATIONS for music literature, pre-RILM. It is a retrospective index to music periodicals published from 1800-1950.