Song Hunting: Arias

These questions and their answers will help you to find the aria you need:  Who is the composer?  Is the aria from an opera, oratorio or cantata?  Or was it composed separately?  

If you don't know, search the online catalog:
Often a title search will tell you quickly who wrote your aria and whether it is from a certain opera, oratorio or cantata.  For example, the catalog provides detailed information for many of the individual pieces on our sound recordings.  Thus, arias performed separately often have author/title entries that tell you who wrote each one and which larger work it is from.  (You won't always find such entries for our printed music.)

If you know the aria is from a certain opera, oratorio or cantata, search the title of the whole opera, oratorio or cantata in the online catalog and limit your search to scores.  If we have it, your aria will be there and your problem is solved.  WARNING:  Do you need a piano-vocal score to take to a voice lesson, or do you need a full score with all the orchestral parts in order to study the orchestration or analyze the harmony?  Full scores and piano-vocal scores are not shelved together. 

Example:  Full scores of operas have the call number M1500; piano-vocal scores have the call number M1503.  Scores in these sections are in alphabetical order by composers' names.  Under each composer's name, scores are in alphabetical order by the titles of the operas.  Once you get used to this, you can often find what you want fast just by browsing.  It works especially well for major operas by major composers, for which we usually have multiple copies.

Is it in an anthology?  You may know that it is, but you may not know which one. 

If I still need answers, what do I do? 

Search the WorldCat database, accessible by clicking here or looking for it on the UNT Libraries Electronic Resources page:

This huge online catalog of the resources of thousands of libraries (including ours)  has excellent search software.  On their search screen, you can limit your search to scores by checking a Musical Scores box.  Then there are several different ways to search.  It might work just to enter your composer's name and aria title in search boxes, keeping their default setting of keyword.  It is also possible to set the pull-down menus for an author and title search.  Please remember that you search composers as authors.  You can also search composer and/or title as "notes."  Notes means "contents notes."  Sometimes contents of anthologies are listed as notes even though the catalog has no author-title entries for them.

(Warning:  WorldCat is a product, not a free website.  You can't access it just by searching the internet.)

Doing a keyword or title search on our online catalog now searches notes, but in cases where our older entries don't have such contents notes, WorldCat can sometimes save the day.  Another library may have provided more detailed cataloging than we did on an item that we have.

Search reference resources such as:

The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, now integrated into Grove Music Online, or:

WILLIS 4FL MUSIC RESERVES and MUSIC REFERENCE:
ML102.O6 N5 1992  4 vols.

This dictionary has two useful appendices at the end of v. 4.  Appendix A lists role names, which operas they are from, and who composed the operas.  Appendix B lists titles of arias and ensembles, which operas and which act they are from, and who composed them.  Some nicknames and some English titles for non-English arias are included.  Warning:  this source does not include arias from oratorios or cantatas.

You can check composers' works lists in the print copy of New Grove or the Grove Music Online to learn about separately composed arias that aren't taken from larger works.

“The Sears”:
Song index; an index to more than 12,000 songs in 177 song collections comprising 262 volumes, edited by Minnie Earl Sears, assisted by Phyllis Crawford.  New York, The H.W. Wilson Company, 1926. 
WILLIS 4FL MUSIC REFERENCE: 
ML128.S3 S31 

Though she focuses mainly on songs, Sears does include many arias. If she includes an aria, she will tell you who wrote it; she might tell you which opera, oratorio or cantata it is from, and she will definitely tell you which anthologies contain it.

Songs in collections; an index, by Desiree de Charms & Paul F. Breed.  Detroit:  Information Service, 1966.
WILLIS 4FL MUSIC RESERVES 
ML128.S3 D37 

These authors also include many arias.  They will tell you who wrote an aria, which opera, oratorio or cantata it is from, and which anthologies contain it.