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  2. Research Guides

MUSL 3100 - Music of the 20th & 21st Centuries: Listening Guide Module

This research guide is designed to help students enrolled in MUSL 239 to successfully complete their research and information literacy assignments for the course.

Locating Information Sources for Your Listening Guide:

In this module, you will locate information sources for your Listening Guide Assignment. There are five activities to complete:

1. TUTORIAL - You will search the library catalog and locate the score to your piece and a related book.

2. WATCH - Video tutorial reviewing how to access and use the Music Periodicals Database to find journal articles for your listening guide.

3. Submit the document URL for an article from the Music Periodicals Database to the music librarian providing instruction for the course.

4. WATCH: Video tutorial introducing the RILM Database and how to search it to find articles, chapters, and books for your listening guide.

5. ASSIGNMENT: Submit the permalink for an article, chapter, or book from the RILM Database to the music librarian providing instruction for the course.

Additional Research Tips:

Is It Okay to Use the Open Web?

Since this course focuses on new music, there may be times when you are unable to find enough articles or books on your composer or work. In these cases, it is acceptable to use websites as supplementary sources, but be sure to vet the information carefully. 

  • Official website for the composer - use only if the composer is STILL ALIVE!
  • University websites - many composers are professors at universities; you may also find articles from symposia or online journals on new music
  • Other appropriate websites - Alex Ross: The Rest is Noise; NewMusicBox.
  • If your work has accompanying text, a translation from a score or book is preferred. You can also use information found in the liner notes of a sound recording as a source.

Free Scholarly Resource: The Composer Diversity Database:

The Composer Diversity Database is a free online resource "created to allow conductors, performers, presenters, educators, and researchers a tool with which to expand and broaden their scope of composers and repertoire." The project was started as the Women Composers Database by composer Rob Deemer to address the exclusion of underrepresented groups in standard information sources used by the decision-makers behind concert programming. The Composer Diversity Database now allows users to search for music by a wide variety of underrepresented groups, including female, non-binary, Latinx, Black, East Asian, West Asian/North African, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and American Indian. Additional databases allow you to search specific repertoires, including art song, orchestra, choral, and wind band.