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MUS 380: Western Music to 1750

Resources and strategies for researching the music of the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical periods

Criticism and Analysis

Criticism and Analysis

Works of criticism and analysis are those that take a more in-depth approach to dissecting the technical/stylistic aspects, impact, or influence or a composer or work. These are written by scholars of music for an audience of scholars, which is why background information sources are helpful for building the knowledge needed to understand the arguments or assertions being made.

Music is part of the humanities; compared to scholarly articles from the sciences, writing in the humanities may seem less structured. There are still strategies you can use to make the process easier, however.

Library Articles Search

Tips for Library Article Search

  • Use advanced search to combine the most important aspects of your topic. Separate your keywords into separate boxes and combine them using AND, OR, and NOT to focus your search. There's a lot of articles in here, so you can be quite detailed.
  • Look for descriptions, abstracts, and introductions to help determine if an article will be helpful.
  • The search will list articles, but the articles live in databases. Click through the "Available Online" options to get to the full text for reading.
  • If you can't figure out where the full text lives, contact a librarian. If we don't have the full text, we can help you make an interlibrary loan request for it.

JSTOR

Tips for Using JSTOR

  • Use the "search within results" option to add additional keywords to your search without starting over.
  • JSTOR doesn't provide as much information up front as some other databases. Be prepared to skim articles to figure out their relevance.

Library Catalog

Tips for Using the Library Catalog

  • Keep your keywords simple to start. 
  • When viewing the catalog page for a specific book, look at the subject headings, description, and/or table of contents to determine if your topic is covered by that book.
  • If the description or table of contents aren't enough for you to tell, open the ebook and use a "search" option, or use the index inside the physical book.