Song Hunting: Classical Songs

People usually search for classical songs (also called art songs or Lieder) by composer and title.  Who is the composer?  If you know that the song is by a certain major composer, a quick way to find it is to go to the shelf to the collections of classical songs by individual composers, find that composer's works, and search tables of contents.  Most such collections have the call number M1620 and are in alphabetical order by composers' last names.  Example: Go to M1620 .B to look for Brahms songs and M1620 .S to look for Schubert songs.

Is the song from a larger work such as a song cycle, or was it composed separately?  A title or keyword search in the online catalog may or may not tell you.  Often we have individual scores for song cycles; the catalog may have a title entry for a whole cycle, but no title entries for all the songs in it.  By contrast, song cycles are frequently included in the collections by individual composers described above, but the catalog usually won't tell you.
  
Works by lesser-known composers may be harder to find.  Is the song contemporary, or is it from a previous period of music history?  Newer works may be harder to find.

Does the song appear in a collection or anthology of songs by various composers?
Example:  the ever-popular Twenty-Four Italian Songs and Arias of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries    

Once again, a title or keyword search in the online catalog may or may not tell you.

If I still need answers, what do I do about it?

Search the WorldCat database: 
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 song 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:

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. 
WILLIS 4FL MUSIC REFERENCE: 
ML128.S3 S31 
New York, The H.W. Wilson Company, 1926.

Sears will tell you who wrote a song, but she will not tell you if it is from a song cycle.  If you find out who the composer is, you can look in the M1620s as described above.  If it is in anthologies of various composers' works, she will tell you which ones.  Then you can look up the anthology titles in the online catalog.

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

These authors will tell you who wrote a song.  If your song is from a song cycle, they will usually tell you which one.   If it is in anthologies of various composers' works, they will tell you which ones.  Then you can look up song cycle titles or anthology titles in the online catalog.

You would be surprised how often the information in these older sources is still helpful.  Starting there often solves your search problems.

The UNT Music Library's card file song index  
This 20-drawer index is located on the north side of the music card catalog.  It indexes the collections of classical songs and folk songs held by this library in the 1940s when the file was created.  (It does NOT include popular songs.)  If the song you need is listed there, ask a music library staff member to show you how to find the call number from the file's special guide at the front of drawer one.

The online song index of the George F. DeVine Music Library, University of Tennessee, Knoxville:http://www.lib.utk.edu/music/songdb/
It indexes classical, folk, and popular songs in collections held by that library.