Collection Spotlight: Diversifying Your Repertoire Part Two
by Amanda DuBose, Visual and Performing Arts Librarian
The Western Musical Canon is a problem. We all love the canon; Stravinsky makes our nerves riot and Strauss makes us want to waltz on stage; but it does not truly represent the music of the era. If every oboist plays the Poulenc Sonata and every pianist plays Listz’s “La Campanella,” then the richness of the era is lost, and its true expression is never heard.
So, what is an enterprising musician to do but choose music from outside the canon.
There are many strategies for finding works by diverse composers. One way is to broadly search for pieces using ethnicity metadata contained in the library catalog, the other is to locate a composer first and then locate a work.
Strategy Two: Find a Composer
Sometimes it can be easier to find a composer first and then check for works by your instrument than it is to look for the music. Digital humanities projects and online databases of composers and their works can help you locate musicians writing at the time or in the style you wish to demonstrate; checking their output or using projects focused on specific instruments (yes, the voice is an instrument) can help you locate pieces for you. The Music Research Guide contains a page on Finding Diverse Repertoire; the box on the middle of the page (scroll down) titled “Locate Lists of Composers/Artists/Works on Websites” can help. It contains a list of online projects to locate diverse composers based on various non-privileged statuses. Additionally, the box below, “Selected Websites & Streaming Media,” contains additional websites and collections including my favorite, Music DH, a project of the Music Library Association that strives to collect as many working digital humanities projects about music as possible in one place.
Once you’ve found your composer, or perhaps even your piece, you can return to the Libraries Search to search for your item or composer. Check out Collection Spotlight: Diversifying Your Repertoire -- Part One for help with that search. If you cannot find what you are looking for, you can look up the work in WorldCat and request the work through ILL, or you can suggest that the library purchase the work for you. As always, ask your friendly neighborhood librarian for assistance whenever needed. To provide feedback or suggest a title to add to the collection, please complete the Resource Feedback Form.