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19th-Century Music: A Guide to Research and Resources

Locate online and print resource including key databases, catalogs, and websites about 19th-Century Music

About This Guide

This guide presents basic and specialized resources for researching the most significant aspects of 19th-century music in Europe and the Americas. Recent musicology has adopted the concept of the "long 19th century" developed by historians and literary critics to describe the progression of ideas between 1789 and 1914. For the ease of division, the PUL guides group Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) with the Classical Period, linked below.

19th-Century Music vs. Romantic Era:

Researchers of this period should note that current scholarship generally replaces the terms "Romantic Era," "Age of Romanticism," "Romantic Music," etc. with the century designation for the period: "19th-Century Music." Current catalogs and article databases generally use the latter term as a descriptor—but "Romanticism" and various derivatives are still common, especially in titles of books, journal articles, and encyclopedia entries, as this guide reveals.

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