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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 21^st 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

LINKING AMONG CLASSICAL RESOURCES 

Classical Music Reference Library is a major addition to the growing collection of tools from Alexander Street Press, joining Classical Scores Library (online scores and manuscripts) and Classical Music Library (online listening). Users of all three resources can link directly from a reference entry to a score and also listen to the music itself. Soon, everything will be integrated further through one-click searching, when The Music Conductor, a unifying search interface, goes live. One search will bring back biographies, scores, audio tracks, Web links, reference entries, and more.  A subscriber to all three Alexander Street classical music collections can, for example, read an article on Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, click to listen to the whole opera, and follow along with the full score. This is how users have always wished research could be done—through single search with results from a variety of resources and in all available formats. 

HOW WILL YOU USE IT? 

Classical Music Reference Library allows users to research across multiple types of reference materials in one single, easy to use interface. The range of materials is diverse—beginning music students can use the collection to explore general themes of a musical period such as the Renaissance, while experts can explore score excerpts from Hildegard von Bingen’s compositional output. 

Both scholars and students will find answers easily to questions such as:

• What is the difference between da capo and del segno?
• When was the cavatina introduced as a form of operatic composition?
• What are the mass parts of the Missa Brevis?
• Show me an example of a duplet.
• With whom did Mahler study composition?
• Where was Die Fledermaus premiered?