General Resources
New to music research? Consider starting at the Music History Research Guide where you will learn strategies for finding and utilizing reference sources, books, articles, scores, audio, video, and other formats available from University Libraries.
Databases for Reference and Research
Reference sources are designed to provide users with quick and authoritative background information on a given subject. They are the ideal place to familiarize yourself with a subject and its existing literature, although they should never be the culmination of your research process. Databases collect scholarly articles and information, and they can direct you to academic journals available from the Libraries. A complete list of databases can be found at the Libraries website. The following reference sources and research databases are all available online, although log-in might be required off-campus.
Online Databases for Music Reference and Research:
Many journals can be found in multiple online databases while others are in-print at Bracken Library. Click here to search for a specific journal title, including online and physical locations. Use the filters on the left and the search bar above to narrow your results. You can also download the browser extension LibKey Nomad to eliminate paywalls you might encounter, if you find an article on Google, Wikipedia, or a publisher's website.
Print Reference and General Works
The recommended books below represent a wide sampling of topics related to musical instruments. Perhaps one or more of these topics will inspire your next research project. Books are sorted by their call numbers for ease of browsing. Click on the info icon to see a description. Also find specific series such as the Yale Musical Instrument Series in which each book focuses on the history, construction, repertoire, and technique of a different instrument. Explore other pages in this guide as well as dedicated instrument guides for recommended books on specific instruments and families.
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The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments
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The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments is the definitive guide to over 12,000 musical instruments from around the world. It encompasses Western, non-Western, and developing-world cultures, and includes classical, folk, and popular music. It also covers instruments of all ages--from the ancient water organ to the synthesizer. The Dictionary describes each instrument individually and in the context of instrument families. It charts the history, development, musical function, and inter-cultural links of each instrument as well as its construction, performance practice, and technique. The New Grove Dictionary also explores the cultures and societies that have created these instruments and the various non-musical functions of certain instruments.
Call Number: ML102.I5 N48 1984 V.1-3 (Music Reference)Publication Date: 1984 -
Musical Instruments of the Bible
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For everyone who's read the Bible and wondered what David's harp, or Nebuchadnezzar's sackbut and cornett really were, Jeremy Montagu, retired curator of Oxford's Bate Collection of Historical Instruments, has composed an astoundingly thorough investigation and explanation of the musical instruments that pepper the pages of Western Civilization's most holy book. This is a detailed study of all the musical instruments mentioned in the Bible, using the resources of linguistics, organology, and ethnomusicology to identify and describe them. Every reference to an instrument is noted and all the misconceptions of translation are corrected.
Call Number: ML166 .M66 2002Publication Date: 2002 -
The Oxford Companion to Musical Instruments
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Musical instruments, from the simplest pipes and drums to those of the utmost complexity, have formed an integral part of the cultures of all peoples of the world from the beginning of time. Their range and diversity have inspired the skill and genius of maker, composer, and player. This book celebrates that achievement and examines in a single A-Z sequence the astonishing variety of acoustic instruments throughout the ages. Each entry provides a concise description of the instrument itself, its construction, development, and playing techniques, together with details of its sound and use within the orchestra or, for ethnomusicological instruments, within rites of passage. Musical examples highlight these points, and the whole text is beautifully illustrated with over two hundred photographs and figures. General articles cover instruments by period, continent, family, and other common groupings, such as orchestra and brass band, while there is wide coverage of related topics, including pitch, chord symbols, forgeries, and oddities.
Call Number: ML460 .B15 1992Publication Date: 1992 -
Origins and Development of Musical Instruments
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Origins and Development of Musical Instruments describes the creation, use, and development of musical instruments from the Old Stone Age to the present day. Musical instruments, from the simplest whistles to the most complex organs, conch trumpets to sousaphones, archers' and musical bows to violins and pianos, the most basic straw reeds to the modern MIDI systems, and pairs of stones struck together to synthesizers, are all described here by instrument collector and expert Jeremy Montagu. Montagu speculates on how these instruments originated in the earliest days of humanity and relates how they moved from one culture to another through history, all the while changing and developing until they became the instruments we know today. The book also surveys the present uses of instruments throughout the world.
Call Number: ML460 .M76 2007Publication Date: 2007 -
Instruments for New Music: Sound, Technology, and Modernism (Print and eBook)
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Player pianos, radio-electric circuits, gramophone records, and optical sound film--these were the cutting-edge acoustic technologies of the early twentieth century, and for many musicians and artists of the time, these devices were also the implements of a musical revolution. Instruments for New Music traces a diffuse network of cultural agents who shared the belief that a truly modern music could be attained only through a radical challenge to the technological foundations of the art. Centered in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, the movement to create new instruments encompassed a broad spectrum of experiments, from the exploration of microtonal tunings and exotic tone colors to the ability to compose directly for automatic musical machines. This movement comprised composers, inventors, and visual artists, including Paul Hindemith, Ernst Toch, Jörg Mager, Friedrich Trautwein, László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Ruttmann, and Oskar Fischinger. Patteson's fascinating study combines an artifact-oriented history of new music in the early twentieth century with an astute revisiting of still-relevant debates about the relationship between technology and the arts.
Call Number: ML460 .P347 2016 and JSTOR BooksPublication Date: 2015 -
The Physics of Musical Instruments
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When we wrote the first edition of this book, we directed our presentation to the reader with a compelling interest in musical instruments who has "a reasonable grasp of physics and who is not frightened by a little mathematics." We are delighted to find how many such people there are. The opportunity afforded by the preparation of this second edition has allowed us to bring our discussion up to date by including those new insights that have arisen from the work of many dedicated researchers over the past decade. We have also taken the opportunity to revise our presentation of some aspects of the subject to make it more general and, we hope, more immediately accessible. We have, of course, corrected any errors that have come to our attention, and we express our thanks to those friends who pointed out such defects in the early printings of the first edition. We hope that this book will continue to serve as a guide, both to those undertaking research in the field and to those who simply have a deep interest in the subject.
Call Number: ML3805 .F58 1998Publication Date: 1998
Interlibrary Loan
Users are encouraged to search for items beyond University Libraries' catalog via RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and WorldCat. Materials not available in print or online may be requested through Interlibrary Loan. Please allow up to seven days for electronic delivery and up to fourteen days for delivery of physical items.