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Biographical Dictionaries
Biographical dicationaries can be used to provide basic facts on the life of the musician, and may provide evaluations of the works of the composer or performer.
Biographical sketches with compositions and bibliographies on composers in early music, renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, modern, early jazz, bebop, swing, country, pop, rock, avant-garde, revivalist, and r&b/rap.
Grove Music Online. Definitive guide to music, including genres, composers, musicians, technique, history, and more
Online access to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (1992), The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (2002), The Grove Dictionary of American Music (2013), The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments (2014), The Oxford Dictionary of Music (2006), The Oxford Companion to Music (2011), and the Encyclopedia of Popular Music (2009). Includes updates to articles that are not available in the printed versions.
Biographical information on approximately half a million people, from antiquity to the present
Provides biographical information on approximately half a million people, from antiquity to the present, along with thousands of images. BRB offers substantive narrative profiles, each about 2,000 words long, from H.W. Wilson publications and other respected publishers.
The biographies are searchable by name, profession, title, place of origin, gender, race/ethnicity, titles of works, date of birth, date of death, keyword, and presence of images. Daily updates provide up-to-the-minute coverage of newsmakers.
Full-text articles, abstracts, and images gleaned from thousands of magazines and journals cover new names and expand on existing profiles. Book review excerpts and full text reviews help users find and select print biographies.
Introductions to 20th-century musicians and composers in all genres. Artists are included from all countries, though the vast majority are from the U.S. and the U.K. Blues, jazz, pop, and rock are particularly well-represented. Each entry offers a list of the artist's principal works, a short biography, and a bibliography.
"This reference for students and music aficionados covers over 650 American classical composers from the eighteenth century to the present. Each entry contains basic biographical information and a critical analysis of the composer's key works and ideas along with worklists and bibliographic information." (from publisher's summary)
Search and read over 130,000 academic eBooks. Formerly NetLibrary
A library of electronic books (e-books) on many academic subjects. The collection includes thousands of titles purchased by OhioLINK, plus thousands of public-domain e-books. Users can preview an e-book online, peruse a page, read each page in depth, jump to specific chapters or pages, or use links in the Table of Content or Index to go directly to specific chapters of interest. Every word in every book is searchable. NetLibrary operates on the library check-out model, where readers check out e-books for a specified amount of time.
Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians
Musicians and Composers of the 20th Century by 
Dictionary of American Classical Composers by