Music Bibliographic Databases

Altenberg Trio Archive (ATA) represents the first stage of what eventually should become a comprehensive online encyclopedia of the Piano Trio. At the present time, this site offers access to two databases: the ATA Opus Database of works written for piano trio and the ATA Ensemble Database which lists performing piano trios past and present. Here you will also find (in German) Altenberg Trio Program Notes to more than hundred works from the group's repertoire. Page by Peter Andritsch.
Archive of Dissertation Abstracts in Music, maintained by Geoffrey Chew (Royal Holloway, University of London).
Australian Music Centre Library, the most comprehensive collection of Australian contemporary compositions in the world. Includes works by more than 300 Australian composers (scores, sets of performance parts, sound recordings, videos, books, etc.).
Bach Bibliography: Research Publication on the Internet, a database of more than 17,000 books, articles, facsimiles, dissertations, and papers read at recognized conferences and meetings. Site maintained by Yo Tomita.
Beethoven Bibliography Database at San Jose State University.
Beethoven Bibliography Database via telnet.
Bibliography of Swedish Music Literature, a database of the Documentation Centre at the Music Library of Sweden. It covers books, articles in all Swedish music periodicals (except fanzines), articles on music in other periodicals, contributions to collective volumes, record liner notes (when substantial), selected documents on the Internet, reviews, etc.
Boethius Server, includes the Society for Music Theory online bibliographic database and Electronic Discussion Forum archives (full text).
British Song Database, a cornucopia of information on over 6,000 song cycles, sets, albums, collections and individual songs, representing a body of song literature from the end of the 16th century to the present. In addition to English songs, there are Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Canadian, Australian, and South African songs.
CAIRSS for Music, a bibliographic database of psychomusicological and biomedical research literature relating to music and musicians (including Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Wagner).
Canadian Music Periodical Index is an index to Canadian music periodical literature which provides bibliographic sources for information on all aspects of musical activity in Canada. Updated monthly, the database currently includes more than 25,000 entries indexed from 475 Canadian music journals, newsletters and magazines from the late nineteenth century to the present day.
CANTUS, a database for Gregorian chant made up of indices of chants in selected manuscripts and early printed sources of the Divine Office. Originally developed at the Catholic University of America, this database is now housed and maintained at the Faculty of Music of the University of Western Ontario. Site maintained by Debra Lacoste.
Catalogue of Printed and Manuscript Music for the Swedish Lute by Kenneth Sparr.
Composers' Catalogues of Works, biographical information (in French) and the complete catalog of works for J.S. Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz, Buxtehude, Chopin, Debussy, César Franck, Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Ravel , Schumann, Telemann and Vivaldi. Pages created and maintained by Robert Poliquin.
Concert Life in Nineteenth-Century London Database, an inter-university research project of Oxford Brookes University, University of Huddersfield, and University of London Goldsmiths College. Page maintained by Paul Dibley.
Database of Mozart Sources, an index of all works already published in, or yet to be edited for, the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe.
Dissertations in Music Theory, an index and abstracts of recently completed doctoral dissertations in music theory. Edited by Eric J. Isaacson.
Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology - Online presents all records of dissertations-in-progress and completed dissertations reported since mid-1995. As previously published records are converted from the original printed editions, they will be added to the database.
Early Music Database, an exhaustive discography of early music recordings compiled by the good folks at osuna.com. Organized by instrument, composer, and record label (et cetera).
European Organ Index, a tool with which you can search various European organ databases at the same time. Project sponsored by the European Union under the Raphael Programme.
Handwritten Sources of the Theory of Music in the Middle Ages, a general list of more than 1200 known manuscripts. This database provides information concerning the date, origin, source, and RISM reference of each entry. In time, this database will constitute an electronic version of the series B III of the International Repertory of the Musical Sources (RISM).
International Inventory of Villancico Texts (IIVT) currently includes information on about 22,000 villancicos from the collection of imprints at the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid and manuscripts in a number of Iberian archives. Compiled by Dr. Paul Laird, University of Kansas.
Íslenskur Músík Arfur, a database of Icelandic music manuscripts in the National and University Library of Iceland. Composed between 1100-1800, the music is mainly in two categories: Catholic church music (antiphons and Gregorian chants) composed prior to the reformation in Iceland (1550) and pre-nineteenth century, monophonic Lutheran hymns. Database maintained by Bjarki Sveinbjornsson. Icelandic.
Mario Biondi's Dictionary of Recorded Opera, a searchable database containing works by more than 500 composers (1,441 opera titles, 3,666 performances, 500 conductors, and more than 5,000 singers). Here you will also find Mario Biondi's Database of Arias, a discography of more than 1200 arias from 308 operas.
Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, a large collection of Byzantine chant-related microfilms and photographs housed at the University of Copenhagen. This online inventory is primarily intended as a tool for identification of sources containing specific repertoires of Byzantine Chant.
Music and Science Information Computer Archive (MuSICA), a database of scientific research (references & abstracts) on music as related to behavior, the brain and allied fields.
Music Libraries Online, a union catalogue for music materials in British libraries.
Musica International Database of Choral Music, contains bibliographic references to more than 80,000 (October 2001) choral music scores from around the world.
Musical Borrowing, an annotated bibliography of writings on the use of borrowed material in musical composition, including: transcription, variations, quotation, cantus firmus technique, paraphrase, imitation/parody, modeling, allusion, and other ways to rework existing music, from troping and organum to collage and electronic manipulation. Edited by J. Peter Burkholder, Andreas Giger, and David C. Birchler.
National Library Service of Italy Data Bank (SBN) includes the music database containing over 300,000 records for printed and handwritten musical documents from the 16th century onwards kept in over 500 public and private collections. It can be considered the main source of information for the national retrospective bibliography of printed music. From this page you can also access the database of Italy's national sound archive.
Organ Database Berlin, contains data on more than 74,000 organs, 53,000 of which are in Germany. German / English.
Renaissance Liturgical Imprints: A Census (RELICS) is a database of information about worship books printed before 1601. Based upon personal inspections of books in most of the major research libraries of the United States and also libraries in a few selected European cities, it includes information on over 9,700 titles. Project directed by Dr. David Crawford, University of Michigan.
La Scala Archive Database currently contains information on approximately 9,800 singers, conductors and musicians who performed at La Scala between 1953 and 1996, as well as information on the composers, librettists, choreographers and their works. Access to this database is free, but users must first register. Italian w/ English table of contents.
The "Scribe" Medieval Music Database at La Trobe University is a systematic collection of scores, color images, texts, and bibliographic information on medieval music which can be searched by text or melody and which will return musical information in the form of a modern score, text data and, where available, a color facsimile of an original manuscript. In contains a complete annual cycle of liturgical chant taken from original medieval sources and complete works of selected composers from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. Project directed by John Stinson.
Sixteenth-Century Printed Tablatures for the Lute, Guitar, and Vihuela, a database of information about printed tablatures for plucked-string instruments from 1500-1599. It is primarily concerned with bibliographical information relating to lute, vihuela, and guitar tablatures; it also contains information on four lesser-known instruments: the cittern, the bandora, the mandora, and the orpharion. Page by Gary R. Boye.
TheseNet: Catalogue Web des Thèses Soutenues en France provides indexing and abstracts of doctoral dissertations granted in France since 1972 for most subjects. Some abstracts are in English and French.
TIME (Technology in Music Education), information on music instructional software including publisher's descriptions, independent reviews, and availability information. Page by Kimberly C. Walls.
Wighton Database, an online catalog to one of the world's finest collections of early Scottish music. Includes a large selection of rare English, Irish and Welsh volumes, with RISM entries in abundance, and many unique items.
Women Composers Collection - University of Michigan Music Library, a special collection of scores by women composers of the art music tradition from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. To access the catalog select MIRLYN Catalogs + Indexes, then via the Web, Guest Signon and UM Library Catalog. The keyword searches "women composers collection" and "music by women composers" will each yield 1,000 bibliographic records.
Zam'ru: The Jewish Choral Music Database lists choral works by Bernstein, Bloch, Mihaud, Mussorgsky, Schoenberg and dozens of other musicians who composed works based on Jewish themes. Page maintained by Andrew Greene.

Online Music Resources