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Music Research Guide

Music Research help from the UMSL Libraries.

Music Research Guide. Text over sheet music photograph.

Welcome!

     

This guide offers an introduction to music research at UMSL Libraries. Use this guide for help with:

  • Discover@UMSL, the library's main search tool for books, articles, and more
  • Music and multidisciplinary databases
  • Scores & sheet music at the library
  • Streaming audio & video
  • Citations

 

Questions? 

Please contact a librarian using the online chat or by emailing/scheduling an appointment (see contact information on the left).

 
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What's New?

Remediating Sound

Studies the phenomena of remixing, mashup and recomposition: forms of reuse and sampling that have come to characterise much of YouTube's audiovisual content. Through collaborative composition, collage and cover songs to reaction videos and political activism , users from diverse backgrounds have embraced the democratised space of YouTube to open up new and innovative forms of sonic creativity and push the boundaries of audiovisual possibilities.

Jazz and Death

Critically examines the myriad and complex interactions between jazz and death, from the New Orleans "jazz funeral" to jazz in heaven or hell, final recordings, jazz monuments, and the music's own presumed death.

Heavy Metal Islam

Explores the influence of Western music on the Middle East and North Africa through interviews with musicians and fans, introducing us to young people struggling to reconcile their religion with a passion for music and a thirst for change.

Mozart in Motion

Following Mozart from his youth in Salzburg to his early death, from his close and rivalrous relationship with his father to his romantic attachments, from his hugely successful operas to intimate compositions on the keyboard, Patrick Mackie leads the reader through the major and lesser-known moments of the composer's life and brings alive the teeming, swiveling modernity of eighteenth-century Europe.

David Bowie and the Art of Music Video

By charting Bowie's creative and collaborative process across five distinct phases, David Bowie and the Art of Music Video shows how he played a vital role in establishing music video as an artform. Filling a gap in the existing literature, this book shines a light on the significant contributions of directors such as Mick Rock, Stanley Dorfman and David Mallet, each of whom taught Bowie much about how to use the form.