Berntsen Library: Music History Resources: Background Reading

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Grove Music Online

Grove Music Online is a great place to begin your research. It contains composer biographies and thousands of articles on music related topics.

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Accessed through Oxford Music Online, Grove Music Online is the perfect starting point for scholarly research with 51,000 articles on topics related to music. Grove's also provides access to these music dictionaries: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition (29 volumes, 2001), The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 2nd edition (3 volumes, 2002), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (4 volumes, 1992) and The Norton Grove Dictionary of Women Composers (1 volume, 1994).

Music History Ebooks

Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century by Richard Taruskin
ISBN: 9780195384819
Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century begins with the invention of musical notation more than a thousand years ago. It addresses topics such as Gregorian chant, Augustine's and Boethius's thoughts on music, the liturgical dramas of Hildegard of Bingen, the growth of the music printing business, the English madrigal, the influence of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, and the operas of Monteverdi.
Music in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries by Richard Taruskin
ISBN: 9780195384826
Music in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries illuminates the explosion of musical creativity that occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Taruskin looks at the elegant masques and consort music of Jacobean England, the Italian concerto style of Corelli and Vivaldi, and the progression from Baroque to Rococo to romantic style. He also offers a fascinating account of the giants of this period: Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven.
Music in the Nineteenth Century by Richard Taruskin
ISBN: 9780195384833
In Music in the Nineteenth Century, Richard Taruskin addresses the romantic transformation of opera, Schubert and the German lied, the rise of virtuosos such as Paganini and Liszt, the twin giants of nineteenth-century opera, Wagner and Verdi, the lyric dramas of Bizet and Puccini, and the revival of the symphony by Brahms.
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians by Stanley Sadie (Editor); John Tyrrell (Editor)
Call Number: Northwestern Reference 780.3 N4
ISBN: 9781561592395
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians presents the music, theory, instruments, and musicians that have helped to define music around the world.
Performing History by Nancy November (Editor)
ISBN: 9781644693544
Performing History is structured into six key areas: historically informed performance; ethnomusicological perspectives; particular musical works that "tell," "enact," or "perform" war histories; operatic works that works that "tell," "enact," or "perform" power or enlightenment; musical works that deploy the body and a broad range of senses to convey histories; and histories involving popular music and performance.