Music Quick Guide: Musical Theater 

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To find materials owned by MIT, use Barton:

Barton Advanced Search

Shortcuts for Researching a Topic: Online and Print Resources

Bibliographies, Dictionaries, and Encyclopedias

• Bloom, Ken. American song: the complete musical theatre companion.
  Ref ML128.M78.B6 1985 v.1-2
  
  
• DeVenney, David P. The Broadway song companion: an annotated guide to musical theatre literature by voice type and song style.
  Ref ML128.M78.D48 1998
  
  
• Everett, William A. The musical: a research and information guide.
  Ref ML128.M78.E84 2004
  
  
• Gänzl, Kurt. The encyclopedia of the musical theatre.
  Ref ML102.M88.G3 1994 v.1-2
  
  
• Hischak, Thomas S. The Oxford companion to the American musical: theatre, film, and television.
  Ref ML102.M88.H593 2008
  
  
• The new Grove dictionary of music and musicians / edited by Stanley Sadie. 2nd edition.
  Ref ML100.G883 2001 v.1-29; Grove Music Online is available as part of Oxford Music Online (MIT only)
  
  
• Norton, Richard C. A chronology of American musical theater.
  Ref ML1711.8.N3.N67 2002 v.1-3

Finding Books and Articles

• Barton (to find materials owned by MIT)
  
  
  • The main call number sections for books on the musical are ML390, ML1711, and ML2054.
  • For specific topics, search by subject: Musicals -- History and criticism; Musical theater -- History; etc.
    
    
• Music index.
  Ref ML118.M987 and online (MIT only)
  Indexes music articles published in journals from 1949-1974 (print) and 1974-present (online).
  
  
• RILM (Répertoire International de la Littérature Musicale) Abstracts of music literature. (MIT only)
  Contains abstracts of music research (articles, books, dissertations) from 1967 on.
  
  
• WorldCat (MIT only)
  Contains over one billion library records of any type of material cataloged by OCLC member libraries, including books, scores, CDs, and videos/DVDs.
  
  
• Google Scholar.
  Includes scholarly literature at MIT and beyond.

To broaden your music search, use Vera Multi-Search

Finding Full-text Journal Articles

• To get the articles found in indexes, click the button in the citation

Finding Music Scores

• For scores in the Lewis Music Library, use Barton Advanced Search and select Scores from the pulldown menu under Formats/Types.
  
  
• For online Public Domain scores, see Public Domain Music Scores

Finding CDs and DVDs

For CDs and DVDs in the Lewis Music Library, use Barton Advanced Search and select CDs or DVDs from the pulldown menu under Formats/Types.

Streaming Audio

• Naxos Music Library (MIT only)
  More than 500,000 tracks of music, representing 35,200 CDs.
  
  
• Internet Archive
  A source for free digital recordings.

Online Resources

• Guide to Musical Theatre
  Lists over 800 musical shows.
  
  
• Musical Heaven
  Synopses of hundreds of musicals, along with MIDI files and links to related pages.
  
  
• Musicals101.com
  Contains articles on the history of musical theater and information on hundreds of musicals.
  
  
• Playbill
  Web site for Playbill.

Peter Munstedt
Lewis Music Librarian
pmunsted@mit.edu

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• Suggest a purchase (MIT only)
  
  
• Interlibrary borrowing (MIT only)