Music History

Facsimiles on the Worldwide Web

British Library

• Music Manuscripts at the British Library include medieval to modern music.  Selected examples have been scanned and put online.

DIAMM

• Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music.  Over 50,000 images from medieval and early renaissance music manuscripts.

IMSLP.org

• Over 15,000 scans of manuscripts from libraries.  Manuscripts are listed alphabetically, but you can use the "Category Walker" to narrow down the results.

Library of Congress

• Several of the digital collections of the United States Library of Congress Music Division include music manuscripts.

Loeb Music Library

• Harvard University's Loeb Music Library has digitized some of its many music scores and libretti, viewable online or downloadable as .pdfs.

The Morgan Library & Museum

• Many of the precious manuscripts held by this New York City landmark have been digitized and made available online.

National Library of Austria

• The Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek's digital collection of manuscripts is extensive.  The website has a mirror version in English.

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In OneSearch, after limiting to "Library Catalog" and "Music Collection" as the Library Location, You can add specific keywords to find primary sources in the collection, for example:

facsimile -- for reproductions of original handwritten manuscripts or early printed music

correspondence -- the Library of Congress subject for letters of specific people is "correspondence."

interview -- many composers and performers have been interviewed by members of the popular press and by scholars.

There are several collections of primary source reading excerpts (translated into English) for music history:

Source Readings in Music History, 2nd edition, by Oliver W. Strunk and Leo Treitler

• ML 160 .S89 1998

Music in the Western World: A History in Documents, by Piero Weiss and Richard Taruskin

• ML 160 .M865 1984

Music through Sources and Documents, by Ruth Halle Rowen

• ML 160 .R8

Source Readings with a Topical Focus:

Jazz:

Keeping Time: Readings in Jazz History, 2nd ed., by Robert Walser

• ML 3507 .K4 2015

Reading Jazz, by David Meltzer

• ML 3507 .R42 1993

Reading Jazz: A Gathering of Autobiography, Reportage, and Criticism from 1919 to Now

• ML 3507 .R44 1996

Music Education:

Music Education: Source Readings from Ancient Greece to Today, 4th ed., by Michael L. Mark

• MT2 .M94 2013

American Music

Music in the U.S.A.: A Documentary Companion, by Judith Tick and Paul Beaudoin

• ML 200 .M89 2008

Readings in Black American Music, by Eileen Southern

• ML 3556 .S75

Music Theory and Philosophy:

Contemplating Music: Source Readings in the Aesthetics of Music, by Carl Dahlhaus and Ruth Katz

• ML 3845 .C66 1987 vol. 1-4

Music in European Thought, 1851-1912, by Bojan Buic

• ML3845 .M973 1988

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music

• ML 3800 .R625 2011

Other Collections of Source Readings:

Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music, by Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner

• ML 197 .A85 2005

Greek Musical Writings, by Andrew Barker

• ML 167 .G73 1984, vol. 1-2

Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources, by Daniel Albright

• ML 197 .M58 2004

Readings in the History of Music In Performance, by Carol MacClintock

• ML 457 .R4

The Routledge Reader on the Sociology of Music, by John Shepherd and Kyle Devine

• ML 3916 .R676 2015

Women in Music: An Anthology of Source Readings from the Middle Ages to the Present, by Carol Neuls-Bates.

• ML 82 .W65 1996