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Jessie Ball duPont Library
Music 243: If It Ain't Got That Swing: The History of Jazz
A guide to basic information resources about the history of jazz, Music 243.
The databases below are among the best to use when performing research in Music. For an expanded listing of possible resources, see the Music listing in the Electronic Databases by Subject. If the article’s full text is not immediately available, use the Journal Finder to help you locate the full-text. (Just type in the title of the journal to see where it is available.) If we do not have access to it, you can request the article via Sewanee ILL, our interlibrary loan program.
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text is a comprehensive bibliography of writings about music featuring citations, abstracts and indexes. It covers nearly one and a half million publications from the early 19th century to the present on traditional music, popular music, jazz, classical music, and related subjects, enhanced with the full text of over 260 periodicals. New titles are being added annually.
A library of more than 590,000 tracks (41,000 CDs) of streaming music from the catalog of Naxos, a leading classical music label, and selected additional labels. While the majority of the tracks are classical, the Naxos Music Library also includes jazz, blues, world and Chinese music. Also provided are text resources including overviews of music history, program notes for recordings, and the complete libretti of operas available in the Naxos Music Library. Click to view instructions for use on mobile devices.
NML offers the catalogs of more than 50 classical, jazz and world music labels, including BIS, Chandos, CPO, Haenssler, Hungaroton, Marco Polo, Vanguard Classics, VOX, and Naxos. World music content is provided by ARC, Celestial Harmonies and others. Also includes selected titles of other leading independent labels, with more labels being added from time to time.
A collection of academic journals in the humanities and social sciences. We subscribe to the "Standard Collection" which is over 300 titles, but not all of the journals on the site. You may want to limit your search to "Only content I have full access to."
Covers hymns of the Judeo-Christian tradition, from many countries and languages, historical and contemporary. Includes articles on individual hymns, authors, hymnals, related organizations, tunes, composers, as well as general topic articles. The interface includes a basic keyword searching function, with results able to be limited by era, place, tradition, role of a person, and other facets. You can browse by category, such as literary topics, Hymns in Latin, specific place, specific era, traditions, and role of a person. You can also browse alphabetically by the title of the article.
This resource replaces and updates the 1892 "Dictionary of Hymnology" by John Julian, including the 1907 supplement and is the work of a team of editors headed by Professor J.R. Watson, University of Durham, UK, and Dr Emma Hornby, University of Bristol, UK.
Provides access to scholarly journals and magazines that support research in areas including drama, music, art history, and filmmaking. Includes full-text content for publications included in the Wilson Art Index and RILM bibliography.
Time Period: 1850-1920
Location: North America
A collection of digital images of 3042 pieces of sheet music published in the United States between 1850 and 1920, from the Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library.
The IMSLP is a project for the creation of a virtual library of public domain music scores, based on the wiki principle, but it is also more than that. Users can exchange musical ideas through the site, submit their own compositions, or listen to other people's compositions, which makes it an ever-growing musical community, by the music lovers for the music lovers. Contains more than 37,000 scores.
A collection of streaming music that includes the following packages: American Song, Classical Music Library, Contemporary World Music Jazz Music Library, Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries, and Opera on Video. Users can search by subjects, historical events, genres, people, cultural groups, places, time periods, ensembles.
Classical Music Library: Labels like EMI, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Boosey & Hawkes, Universal Edition, and the BBC; 16,000 classical works, over 200 genres, and thousands of artists and ensembles.
American Song: All genres of American music and time periods covered, including blues, popular, old time, ragtime, protest songs, rockabilly, and more; Hundreds of American historical events, commissioned folk songs, and thousands of artists and ensembles.
Contemporary World Music: Traditional and contemporary genres covered, worldbeat, Afropop, ritual songs, folk traditions, Indian classical, and more; more than 160 countries, 400 languages, 1,000 cultural groups, and 2,000 instruments.
Jazz Music Library: labels, including Verve, GRP, Impulse! Records, Universal Classics & Jazz, Blue Note, Concord Jazz, Riverside, Milestone, Original Jazz Classics, Jazzology, Pablo; all genres covered, including vocal jazz, bebop, big band, swing, acid jazz, modal jazz, traditional jazz, Latin jazz, and ragtime; more than 100 genres and thousands of artists and ensembles.
Smithsonian Global Sound for Libraries: includes the published recordings owned by the non-profit Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label and the archival audio collections of the legendary Folkways Records, Cook, Dyer-Bennet, Fast Folk, Monitor, Paredon and other labels. It also includes music recorded around the African continent by Dr. Hugh Tracey for the International Library of African Music (ILAM) at Rhodes University as well as material collected by recordists on the South Asian subcontinent from the Archive Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (ARCE), sponsored by the American Institute for Indian Studies.
Opera in Video: 250 of the most important opera performances, captured on video through staged productions, interviews, and documentaries, and then delivered online through streaming video.
Traces the evolution of Western classical music by one of the most prominent and provocative musicologists of our time, Richard Taruskin. Includes text, notes, bibliographies, further readings, illustrations, musical examples, and links to relevant content in Grove Music Online. Has search and browse options for easy navigation.
A collection of reviews, interviews, and features on rock music artists from a variety of music magazines, including Rolling Stone, Creem, Mojo, Guitar World, The Independent, NME, etc. Includes material from 1960 to present; updated weekly.
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