Tips for finding individual songs or arias

1. It's best to search the library catalog by song title (or song title and composer) to start. Do a Boolean search for [“song title”] and [composer]. Limit your search to printed music or recording. (Don't forget to use the card catalog for titles acquired by the library prior to 1980.) We don't recommend a "Start of Title" search because your song may be from a larger work, or may be included in an anthology or collection with a different title. Of course, if you are looking for the entire work, or you know the name of the collection you need, you could do a search for Start of title = West Side Story, for example.

2. If that doesn't work, you may need to determine if your piece comes from a larger work (e.g., song cycle, opera, oratorio, cantata). Use the Grove Dictionary (look under the composer's works list) or ask at the Reference Desk to find this information.

3. If you can't find the song by searching our catalog, you may need to check a print index to determine if the song is part of a larger printed anthology. See the "Song Indexes" tab of this guide.

A few tips regarding the library catalog

Know your limits

Search limits that is--limit by format (score, recording, film, language, date, etc). These are "sticky"--once you set them they persist until you clear them.

Boolean and advanced search

Use the Boolean search option to combine various words in your search. For example, if you want to find scores of Brahms songs, you could do a search like this and get anything that included the term Brahms and songs OR Brahms and lieder (the German word for songs).

Use can use the advanced search for something like this:

Pluralize, pluralize

Uniform titles (titles the library uses to group like items together) and subject headings usually use the plural form of a word--songs, scores, settings, etc. You can also approach this with truncation. Don't know whether the score you are looking for contains one symphony, two sinfonia, or three symphonien? Use symphon? instead. Same for sonat? and quartet?, etc.

Some useful subject headings

operas-librettos

Singing --Diction.

--Vocal scores with piano.

Songs (Medium voice) with orchestra --Vocal scores with piano.

Songs (High voice) with instrumental ensemble--Scores.

Songs, [country]

***For more examples, see the "subject headings" tab attached to this tab.