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»Databases You Can Listen To

We dare you to spend less than half an hour listening to two new music databases—Smithsonian Global Sound and Classical Music Library. Both are searchable electronic collections of music and sound containing tens of thousands of recordings that you can listen to online through headphones or your speakers. A search in either database can be simple—e.g., show a list of songs by Mahalia Jackson or of music composed by Sibelius—or more complex, by combining multiple fields such as genre, instrument, ensemble, and label. In Smithsonian Global Sound, for example, you could search for American folk music featuring the Appalachian dulcimer as an accompanying instrument. In the Classical Music Library, a search for Beethoven on the EMI label with Jacqueline du Pré on cello yields 14 Variations of an Original Theme in E flat, Op. 44, among other works.

As you listen to the recordings, you can simultaneously search and browse supplementary reference information such as a dictionary of musical terms, composers’ biographies, and a concise history of music. Both databases allow you to create your own password-protected playlists and provide a secure way for faculty to organize and share course music with students. Content is published under licensing agreements with both major and independent labels.

Smithsonian Global Sound includes music from a wide variety of genres, such as blues, American Indian, world, bluegrass, jazz, Broadway, and spoken words and sounds (e.g., drama, poetry, speeches, animal sounds). The collection includes the published recordings owned by the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label; the archival audio collections of Folkways Records; music recorded in Africa for the International Library of African Music; and material collected on the South Asian subcontinent by the Archive Research Centre for Ethnomusicology.

Selections in the Classical Music Library range from Gregorian chants to works by modern composers, including symphonic music, vocal and instrumental music, choral works, and music from the stage and screen. The database includes multiple versions of some works to enable comparative listening. Access both from the Research Advisor under “Music.”