Classical Music Reference Library will bring together more than 40,000 pages of essential reference materials, spanning the entire history of Western classical music, in a unified online collection.
Included are the authoritative reference titles Baker’s Dictionary of Music, Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, and Baker’s Student Encyclopedia of Music, which have never before been available in electronic form, along with other resources. The Baker’s titles, edited by the late Nicholas Slonimsky, offer a comprehensive and highly accessible set of musical reference texts that are essential to all music libraries.
CONTENT AND FUNCTIONALITY
From the ancient Greek modes to modern compositions for prepared piano, Classical Music Reference Library offers comprehensive coverage of all classical genres, spanning music from the Medieval period to the 21st century, including definitions of musical terms and biographical information on the major classical composers and artists. In addition to the Baker’s resources, there are biographies, chronologies, primary source readings, and critical texts.
Alexander Street’s deep indexing, multiple and combinable search fields, and highly functional browsing allow researchers to find information that might otherwise remain buried or unreachable. No one offers such an extensive controlled vocabulary of musical terms—more than 200 classical genres and subgenres, 11,000 composers, 7,000 performers and ensembles, and 200 instruments.
Search results are delivered in an organized and integrated way:
Full text from major reference works
Biographical information on major composers and artists
Score and lyric excerpts, plus musical and notational terms
Photographs and images of people, instruments, and ensembles
LYRASIS members may subscribe at any time.
