RILM Music Encyclopedias is a full-text collection of reference works, offering comprehensive and continually expanding coverage of historical musicology, ethnomusicology, and music theory. Designed to support teaching, learning, and research, it serves the needs of the international music community. The collection currently includes over 60 influential titles, spanning publications from 1775 to the present, and enables powerful, federated searches across its content. Covering multiple languages and countries–including Italian, German, Slovak, Spanish, and Albanian–RILM Music Encyclopedias features essential national and subject-specific works such as the Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Music, International Encyclopedia of Women Composers, and Das Gothic- und Dark Wave-Lexikon.
As a comprehensive, cross-searchable resource, RILM Music Encyclopedias provides the international music community with a virtual library of essential reference works. It covers a wide range of disciplines, fields, and subject areas, including historical musicology, ethnomusicology, pop and rock, opera, instruments, blues, gospel, recorded sound, and women composers. Key general music publications featured in the collection include Algemene muziekencyclopedie, Biographical dictionary of musicians, Dictionnaire de la musique, The Garland encyclopedia of world music, and Handwörterbuch musikalischer Terminologie. Seminal historical works, such as Fétis’ Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique, Eitner’s Biographisch-bibliographisches Quellen-Lexikon, and Riemann’s Musik-Lexikon (11th edition), are also included, providing unparalleled depth and historical context.
