Category Archives: Resources

by | June 21, 2010 · 4:45 pm

Harry Partch’s instruments

Sponsored by American Public Media and The Harry Partch Foundation, the free Internet resource Harry Partch’s instruments includes interviews with Partch, a complete recorded performance of his The bewitched, links to essays by and about Partch, and—perhaps most engagingly—a virtual instrumentarium that allows visitors to “play” each of the 27 instruments that he designed and built via their computer’s mouse or keyboard.

The website was produced as part of the American Mavericks radio and Internet series, which features  the music and stories of visionary American composers. The series is produced in association with the San Francisco Symphony and its Music Director, Michael Tilson Thomas.

Below, Partch demonstrates his instruments, ca. 1958 (in two parts).

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by | June 9, 2010 · 9:45 am

Prague concert life, 1850–1881

Sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust and Cardiff University, Prague concert life, 1850–1881: An annotated database is a free resource for all those interested in nineteenth-century Czech music, history, and culture. The fullest possible information about each musical performance in Prague—from public concerts to private soirées, from large-scale festivals to everyday rehearsals, in venues ranging from local inns, guest houses, and restaurants to the most fashionable and successful society halls, parks, and gardens—is documented on the basis of articles in Czech- and German-language periodicals from 1850 through 1881; only musical theater events are excluded.

Entries typically list the date, time, and venue; the program and works that were presented; and the individuals, societies, and institutions that took part. Additional commentaries include clarifications of editorial decisions; supplementary factual data such as audience numbers, admission prices, and changes of venue or program; detailed information about individuals, venues, societies, and institutions, highlighting notable trends and occurrences within the city’s musical environment; outlines of the content and critical stance of descriptive reports and reviews; and evaluations of the source material from a scholarly perspective. Search and navigation tools include basic keyword search, advanced search, and hyperlinks.

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Filed under Reception, Resources, Romantic era

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by | May 28, 2010 · 7:43 am

Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project

An initiative of the Department of Special Collections of the Donald C. Davidson Library at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project presents digital remasters of nearly 8000 cylinders that are catalogued according to standard library rules for sound recordings. The collection may be searched by keyword, author, title, subject, year, or call number, or it can be browsed by genre, instrument, topic, or language. The recordings can all be heard and downloaded for free; the project is happy to receive donations of further recordings and financial support.

Among the collection’s rare gems are 225 recordings of pre-1902 popular music, including cylinders of Sousa’s Grand Concert Band.

Related article: John Philip Sousa, violinist

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Filed under Popular music, Resources, World music

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by | May 15, 2010 · 1:28 pm

The pure drop

Produced under the Australian government’s Broadband Production Initiative, Ether Multimedia’s The pure drop is a free online resource that describes itself as “an exploration and celebration of traditional and world music”.

The site is organized around eleven short videos—all under six minutes—that explore topics such as instruments, lyrics, and transmission; links to further information about the specific topics in the videos are provided, and study guides, maps, a hyperlinked index of persons, and other supporting materials are included.

While this resource is clearly intended for use in secondary schools, and is so used throughout Australia, it is available to anyone interested in video interviews, performances, and mp3 audio by traditional, neotraditional, and popular musicians such as Billy Bragg, Värttinä, and Yothu Yindi.

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by | May 11, 2010 · 11:22 am

Musique contemporaine / Contemporary music

Founded in 2007 by a consortium of French and international institutions and ensembles, Musique contemporaine/Contemporary music is a bilingual search engine for contemporary art music resources held at French institutions. Users can listen to excerpts of unpublished sound archives of conferences and concerts and read the program notes for these events. A glossary (in French) defines the main concepts involved in contemporary music, and an interactive structural map provides links to glossary entries, composers’ biographies, work excerpts, and so on. Also included are an interactive tag cloud of the composers who are most referenced, a composers’ timeline, and an interactive map showing the main French contemporary music organizations and providing their addresses. Simple and advanced searching tools are available.

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by | May 8, 2010 · 9:41 am

Petrucci Music Library


Founded in 2006, the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) hosts the Petrucci Music Library, a free wiki-based source for public-domain scores.

The library, which is named for the innovative music printer Ottaviano Petrucci (1466–1539), mainly comprises scans of music editions whose copyright has expired; it also welcomes scores by contemporary composers who are willing to license their works without charge.

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by | May 3, 2010 · 12:54 pm

Omaha Indian music

Part of the online American memory series sponsored by the Library of Congress, Omaha Indian music presents traditional Omaha music recorded in Nebraska in the 1890s and 1980s. This multiformat ethnographic field collection comprises 44 wax cylinder recordings collected between 1895 and 1897 by Francis La Flesche and Alice Cunningham Fletcher, 323 songs and speeches from the 1983 Omaha powwow (above), and 25 songs and speeches from a 1985 concert at the Library of Congress; contextual information is provided by photographs, field notes, and interviews with Omaha tribe members.

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Filed under Ethnomusicology, North America, Resources

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by | May 2, 2010 · 3:34 pm

Follow the drinking gourd

In 2008 the technology and publishing executive Joel Bresler created the multimedia website Follow the drinking gourd to share his research into the origins and history of the U.S. song, which was popularized by The Weavers and has been recorded some 200 times and reprinted in over 75 songbooks.

While providing ample documentation of the song’s reception history, this unusual resource probes persistent questions regarding the song’s provenance—not least, whether there is any basis for the idea that it was sung by African Americans during the Underground Railroad era. The site presents discussions by authoritative folklorists exploring such questions, and concludes with an invitation to collaborate by supplying further documentation.

Above, the first known publication of the song (Austin: Texas Folklore Society, 1928).

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Filed under Ethnomusicology, North America, Reception, Resources, Source studies

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by | April 28, 2010 · 3:03 pm

Concertina library

Concertina library: Digital reference collection for concertinas is an online collection of English, Anglo, and duet concertina resources, with entries ranging from research-based articles to instruction manuals, sheet music, and organological studies. Created by the computer scientist and concertina player Robert Gaskins, the library aims to compile and index all of the writings by leading authors on concertina matters, making them available to the public for free.

Above: Marie Lachenal with her concertina, ca. 1885.

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by | April 24, 2010 · 9:21 am

Music theory from Boethius to Zarlino

The winner of the Music Library Association’s 2009 Vincent H. Duckles Award, Music theory from Boethius to Zarlino: A bibliography and guide by David Russell Williams and C. Matthew Balensuela (Hillsdale: Pendragon Press, 2007) is a companion volume to Pendragon’s  Music theory from Zarlino to Schenker: A bibliography and guide by Williams and David Damschroder (1990). Like the earlier volume, the book aims to create a logically organized introduction to major Medieval and Renaissance theorists and a thorough review of scholarly work on them.

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Filed under Antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance, Resources, Theory

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