Online Resources

Here is a selection of online resources for teachers, students, scholars and lovers of American song.

African American Art Song Alliance

Founded in 1997, this is the home of interchange between performers and scholars interested in art song by African-American composers. Here you will find information and links to assist with your discovery of our contribution to song.

http://artsongalliance.org

African Diaspora Music Project

The vision of the African Diaspora Music Project is to create a repository for the concert works (those intended for the concert stage; a.k.a. classical works) of composers of the African Diaspora. (The African Diaspora in this context is defined as those composers throughout the world descended from people of West and Central Africa); to provide access to scores, recordings, and programmatic information about these composers and their extant works for students, teachers, professionals and presenters; to encourage the research, exploration and performance of these works; to assist students who wish to enter the George Shirley African American Art Song and Operatic Aria Competition with appropriate repertoire choices.

http://africandiasporamusicproject.org

Amazon.com

Your purchase (via the link here!) supports the Hampsong Foundation, which supports Song of America.net.

https://smile.amazon.com

American Composers Forum

Linking composers and communities. The American Composers Forum provides opportunities for composers and their music to flourish and engage communities in the creation, performance and enjoyment of new music.

https://composersforum.org

American Music Center

The American Music Center is dedicated to building a national community of artists, organizations, and audiences interested in new American music. Its Online Music Library is a comprehensive digital library with over 45,000 works by over 5,500 composers.

http://library.newmusicusa.org

American Music Preservation

The American Music Preservation website provides information about American music from the past to more recent times. The goals of the website are to present, preserve, promote, protect and provide American music through lectures, performances, research, publications, and recordings. Information regarding the music of classical composers, as well as film music, Shaker music, "New England" music, and popular songs, can be found on this website.

http://www.americanmusicpreservation.com

American Music Research Center (U. of Colorado Boulder)

The American Music Research Center (AMRC) is a rare music repository dedicated to exploring the rich tradition of American music. The AMRC shares its resources with students, faculty, scholars, and the public through concerts, symposia and lectures, publications, and other scholarly activities. Important collections include the Helen Walker Hill Collection of Black Women Composers, separate music sheets from 1870 to 1920, and an extensive archive of Colorado composers.

https://www.colorado.edu

American Musicological Society: The Thomas Hampson Fund–Supporting Research and Publication on Classic Song

The Thomas Hampson Fund was established in 2009 in honor of the OPUS Campaign and by the AMS in recognition of Hampson's outstanding contributions to the field of music as a performer, teacher, and scholar. The fund is dedicated to fostering editions and scholarship on classic song in all its contexts, as well as new and innovative technologies for promoting and understanding classic song via interactive media and the Internet. The current maximum award is $1,000.

http://www.ams-net.org

ArkivMusic.com

The Source for Classical Music™. Online retailer of classical CDs, MP3s and DVDs. Your purchase supports the Hampsong Foundation, which supports SongofAmerica.net.

http://www.arkivmusic.com

Association for Cultural Equity

The Association for Cultural Equity (ACE) was founded by Alan Lomax to explore and preserve the world's expressive traditions with humanistic commitment and scientific engagement. This website includes extensive resources for students and educators.

http://www.culturalequity.org

BBC Radio 4: America, Empire of Liberty Series

The BBC Radio 4 three-part series America, Empire of Liberty, featuring scholar David Reynolds, "charts the development of the United States, exploring three key themes: Empire, Liberty and Faith." On this website, you can find teasers for each episode of the series, as well as audio-video slideshows featuring historic photographs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk

Black Music Library

This digital library was born out of a need to make resources about Black music history as comprehensive and accessible as possible. It contains well over one thousand entries (and counting) in the form of books, articles, documentaries, series, radio segments, and podcasts about the Black origins of popular and traditional music, dating from the 18th century to the present day. These materials range from informal to scholarly, meaning there is something in the library for everyone.

https://blackmusiclibrary.com

Boulanger Initiative Database

Designed for everyone – musicians, performers, conductors, students, researchers, educators, artistic administrators, and anyone with a curious mind – the Boulanger Initiative Database (BID) provides access to thousands of works by women and gender-marginalized composers. By sharing knowledge and resources, BID increases access to works by underrepresented composers, empowering all who wish to diversify classical music programming. Explore over 8,000 works by more than 1,200 composers with ease, available to you for free.

https://database.boulangerinitiative.org

Bruce Duffie’s Transcribed Interviews

Classical Radio Announcer Bruce Duffie has posted many of his interviews, including those with singers and composers of songs. The webpage is updated as new items are added.

http://www.bruceduffie.com

Carnegie Hall: Timeline of African American Music

Encompassing the earliest folk traditions to present-day popular music, the new Timeline of African American Music is a detailed view of the evolution of African American musical genres that span the past 400 years. This exploration of African American musical traditions reveals the unique characteristics of each genre and style, while offering in-depth studies of pioneering musicians who created some of America’s most timeless artistic expressions.

https://www.carnegiehall.org

Classical Vocal Repertoire

Classical Vocal Repertoire offers the largest collection of solo vocal sheet music in the USA: opera, art songs, specialty numbers, new composers, rare music and old favorites, including many hard-to-find titles. Formerly located at the url http://www.classicalvocalreprints.com, Classical Vocal Repertoire has launched a new e-commerce site at the address http://www.classicalvocalrep.com.

http://www.classicalvocalrep.com

Digital Public Library of America

The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science. The DPLA aims to expand this crucial realm of openly available materials, and make those riches more easily discovered and more widely usable and used.

https://dp.la

Duke University: Historic American Sheet Music

The Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University holds a significant collection of 19th and early 20th century American sheet music. The Historic American Sheet Music Project provides access to digital images of 3042 pieces from the collection, published in the United States between 1850 and 1920.

https://library.duke.edu

Instant Encore

The mission of InstantEncore.com is to be the world’s leading resource for delivering and enjoying live classical music anywhere and anytime.

http://www.instantencore.com

Library of Congress: Performing Arts Encyclopedia

This Web site commemorates the history of the American art song by highlighting the Library's unparalleled collections of holograph manuscripts, first editions of published sheet music, copyright deposits, and recordings.

http://www.loc.gov

Library of Congress: Song of America

This Web site commemorates the history of the American art song by highlighting the Library's unparalleled collections of holograph manuscripts, first editions of published sheet music, copyright deposits, and recordings.

https://www.loc.gov

Lyrical Legacy: 400 Years of American Song and Poetry

Lyrical Legacy helps teachers explore eighteen American songs and poems from the digital collections of the Library of Congress. Each song and poem is represented by an original primary source document, along with historical background information and, in many cases, sound recordings and alternate versions.

http://www.loc.gov

Manhattan School of Music Distance Learning

Manhattan School of Music is a leading provider of distance learning programs to higher education, K-12 schools and community organizations around the globe. Using interactive videoconferencing technology, MSM offers a wide range of programs and classes in music instruction, general music, masterclasses & coachings, audition preparation, professional development & academic seminars, and standards-based interdisciplinary offerings in classical and jazz music.

http://dl.msmnyc.edu

Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline Project

Featuring many American women poets, The Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline Project aims to eventually be the largest database of women poets in the world. The site is a meeting place for poets, scholars, and students of poetry to see the global relationships among women poets across time, space, and national barriers.

http://www.mezzocammin.com

Oral History of American Music (OHAM) at Yale University

"Oral History of American Music (OHAM) is the preeminent project in the field of music dedicated to the collection and preservation of oral and video memoirs in the voices of the creative musicians of our century. It is a special kind of history, one that captures sights and sounds and recreates the spontaneity of a moment in time. The sound of a voice is an immediate link to the past--gestures, speech patterns, laughter--these are vivid reminders of the unique qualities of a personality, and they reflect the atmosphere of his or her time and place in history." -- excerpt from OHAM website

https://web.library.yale.edu

PBS American Experience Films

The WGBH PBS American Experience series, both on TV and on the Web, produces high-quality programs that bring "to life the incredible characters and epic stories that have shaped America’s past and present." Of particular interest to the Song of America project are the programs Stephen Foster and Walt Whitman. Other related music and song-related programs include Ballad of a Mountain ManDuke Ellington - Reminiscing a TempoIf You Knew SousaJubilee SIngers: Sacrifice and GloryNow In Praise of Famous Men - Revisited, and That Rhythm, Those Blues.

http://www.pbs.org

Poetry Foundation

Find a poem. Discover poetry. The Poetry Foundation is an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. It exists to discover and celebrate the best poetry.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org

Poets.org

The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit organization with a mission to support American poets at all stages of their careers and to foster the appreciation of contemporary poetry.

https://www.poets.org

SheetMusicPlus

Online retailer of classical sheet music from Medieval through Contemporary. Your purchase supports the Hampsong Foundation, which supports SongofAmerica.net.

https://www.sheetmusicplus.com

Society for American Music

The mission of the Society for American Music is to stimulate the appreciation, performance, creation and study of American musics of all eras and in all their diversity, including the full range of activities and institutions associated with these musics throughout the world. The Society's website includes links to various web resources, educational documents (such as classroom syllabi), and information regarding the organization and its publications and affiliations.

http://american-music.org

SongHelix

SongHelix is a search engine designed to search through the vast number of art songs by poet, date of composition, thematic links, keywords, or utility. The website’s immediate purpose is to give singers and teachers the primary online tool for finding related repertoire. A secondary, and broader purpose will be to help to revitalize the form of voice recital by allowing for creative programming through novel associations. The website makes it possible for the user to search song repertoire by terms customarily found in print reference, but SongHelix’s real power is the ability to search by “Feature” as well. When searching within the “Feature” category the user will be able to discover aspects of the songs such as: dreams, stages of life, moving water, Greek mythology, particular metaphors, etc.

http://www.songhelix.com

Star Spangled Music: Celebrating the Bicentennial of America’s National Anthem

StarSpangledMusic.Org is dedicated to sharing instructional resources and educational projects about American patriotic song. It was founded on September 14, 2012 — the 198th anniversary of the writing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” — and will serve as a permanent site to celebrate the history of the United States in song. The organization will post a calendar of events and weblinks dedicated to this same mission. To find out how to list your event or link, or to find out how you can help develop starspangledmusic.org, please email [email protected].

http://starspangledmusic.org

The Colonial Music Institute

The Colonial Music Institute conducts and promotes research and educational outreach in the fields of early American music and dance. Through its website the Institute offers information and resource materials for students and fellow scholars, as well as helpful publications and online databases for researchers and teachers. CMI’s mission features primary research enlightened by interdisciplinary scholarship, disseminated through scholarly writing, authentic performances, and sound recordings made to the highest standards.

https://www.colonialmusic.org

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

Founded in 1994, The Gilder Lehrman Institute promotes the study and love of American history. The Institute serves teachers, students, scholars, and the general public.

https://www.gilderlehrman.org

The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music

The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music consists of over 29,000 pieces of American popular music. The collection spans the years 1780 to 1980, but its strength is its throrough documentation of nineteenth-century America through popular music. The collection is especially strong in music spawned by military conflicts from the War of 1812 through World War I, and minstrel music is also well-represented. Other topics include music about the circus; dance; drinking, temperance, and smoking; fraternal orders; presidents; romantic and sentimental songs; schools and colleges; and transportation.

http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu

The LiederNet Archive

This site houses an extensive, growing archive of texts to over 67,000 settings of Lieder and other classical art songs. RecMusic.org was created in May 1995 by Emily Ezust, and is offered as a free public service.

http://www.lieder.net

The Petrucci Music Library

The Petrucci Music Library is a virtual library containing public domain music scores and/or sheet music, as well as scores from composers who are willing to share their music with the world without charge.

https://imslp.org

UbuWeb

UbuWeb is a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts. Rare and out-of-print recordings of composers, poets and pieces of music are available for free to the public.

http://www.ubu.com

University Musical Society (University of Michigan Ann Arbor)

The University Musical Society and AADL have partnered to create an online home for the UMS archives. This online exhibit contains concert programs from the first 100 years of UMS as well as photographs up to the present day.

https://aadl.org

Voices Across Time

American history through music: a “Timely Tunes” listing of American songs relating to the season or current events.

http://voices.pitt.edu

Women Song Composers: A Listing of Songs Published in the United States and England, ca. 1890-1930

This database, a research project of Christopher Reynolds of the University of California, Davis, "contains 5116 songs (and song sets and cycles) by women composers active in North America and England between 1890-1930, songs by fully 515 composers."

http://musdra.ucdavis.edu

WorldCat

WorldCat is the world's largest network of library content and services. WorldCat lets you search the collections of libraries in your community and thousands more around the world for books, scores, recordings, and other media.

http://www.worldcat.org

Yale University Music Library

American song database of the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library: Streaming audio sound recordings relating to American history in song and spoken word. Contains songs by and about American Indians, miners, immigrants, slaves, pioneers, cowboys, etc.

https://web.library.yale.edu