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How to Find a Pop Song in the Music Library Sound Recording Printed Music (Score) How to Find the Printed Music for a Single Work in a Composers Complete Works Thematic Catalogs Caveats
Sound Recording From the Cuny+ Basic Search screen (searching City College), select the Guided Search button at the top of the screen. Type in the name of the song in the first box, and choose Yes for Phrase search. Near the bottom of the screen, select Sound Recording for Record type. To obtain the call number from the Results screen, click on the underlined holdings library (right column).
If your search is unsuccessful, check the spelling and consider variants of the title. Most of the librarys sound recordings have contents notes, but not all, so, although the library may have a recording of a song, Cuny+ can search only the information in the items bibliographic record (not the recording itself). If the song is from a larger work (for example West Side Story), search for the complete work because each song (e.g., Maria) is not listed separately.
Printed Music (Score)
The library collects songbooks that include collections of songs, rather than sheet music for individual songs. You will therefore need to determine whether the library owns a collection that includes the song you need. If only the lyrics will suffice, try a Google search by title.
1. Follow the above procedure for sound recordings, but select Musical Score for Record type. Unlike the recordings, most of the librarys scores (because of their larger size) do not have contents notes, so it is more likely you will need to look further.
2. If you know the composer, check Cuny+ to see whether the library owns a collection of songs by that composer. If so, but theres no contents note in Cuny+, get the call number and go to the stacks on the lower level to check the score itself.
3. Click on Quicklinks from the librarys homepage and then on WorldCat under Catalogs. Type in the name of the song in the first box and, near the bottom of the screen, limit type to Musical Scores. Your search will retrieve a list of collections that include the song. Collections owned by City College will be highlighted in green (scroll down the results list). If the link to Cuny+ is not working, note the name of the collection, and search it (by title) in Cuny+ to get the call number. If the score is available, it will be shelved by call number on the lower level.
4. The library owns several song indexes (listed below) for pop songs. You will find these shelved in the book reference collection. If the song is very current, check the books publication date to be sure it does not pre-date the song. Look for the name of the song in the index and note the number or symbol for the collection in which it appears. Then check the list at the front of the volume to determine in which collection the song is published. The call numbers for most of the collections the library owns are penciled in (check Cuny+ by title for collections without call numbers).
Ferguson, Gary. Song Finder; a title index to 32,000 popular songs in collections, 1854-1992. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995 (Ref/ML/128/S3/F47/1995)
Goodfellow, William. SongCite; An index to popular songs. N.Y.: Garland, 1995 (Ref/ML/128/P63/G65/1995) and a 1999 supplement.
Goodfellow, William. Wheres that Tune; An index to songs in fakebooks. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1990 (Ref/ML/128/P63/G66/1990)
Havlice, Patricia. Popular Song Index. Metuchen, N.J.; Scarecrow Press, 1975 (Ref/128/S3/H4) and two supplements: 1978 and 1984.
5. The following two books for useful for finding additional details about a song (but not the lyrics or music) that you may be having difficulty locating. They are shelved behind the circulation desk (request them from a staff member).
Lax, Roger. The Great Song Thesaurus. N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1984.
Mattfeld, Julius. Variety Music Cavalcade, 1620-1969; A chronology of vocal and instrumental music popular in the United States. 3d ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971.
How to Find the Printed Music for a Single Work in a Composers Complete Works Complete (or collected) works editions exist for many composers of Western art music. Theyre supposed to include everything a composer wrote (but see Caveats below). The librarys collection of these editions is shelved on the lower level in the score reference section. The first line of the call number is 05, then theyre arranged alphabetically by composer. While volumes in these sets may not be borrowed for home use, they are invaluable resources because theyre usually (depending on their date) the most scholarly edition of a composers music and may be the only score (or the only one available) that the library owns of a particular work.
Thematic Catalogs: The main difficulty in using complete works editions is that there may be several shelves of virtually indistinguishable volumes in each set. And if a title other than the series appears on the spine of each volume, its likely to be in German. So it can be difficult to find an individual piece. Furthermore, Cuny+ lists only the complete set, not each piece individually. Thematic catalogs (shelved in the librarys book reference section, main level--ML/134--then alphabetical by composer) are the solution to this problem. They list everything a composer wrote (by opus number), with a music incipit for the first few measures of each movement, and they indicate in which volume of that composers collected works a piece is published. (Most composers for whom complete works editions have been published also have thematic catalogs.)
Many thematic catalogs will be in German, but dont be intimidated by a foreign language. You need to look for only the collected works information, usually near the beginning of the entry. If the language is German, a likely abbreviation to look for is GA (Gesamt-ausgabe=complete edition), or NGA (Neue Gesamt-ausgabe=new complete edition), followed by a series of numbers (both Arabic and/or roman) and letters (the series can get complicated, but copy the information, and it should match up with what you will find on the shelf). If you dont see the volume information near the top of the entry, check the end. The volume information has been penciled in for volumes the library received after the thematic catalog was published.
Caveats: Although theyre called complete works, these editions are frequently not complete. Theyre usually issued one volume at a time over a period of many years. While the library places a standing order to receive each volume when published, a work you need may be in a volume that has not yet been published. For a variety of reasons, some complete editions are never completed. As scholarship advances, old critical editions may become obsolete and new editions initiated. This is why the library owns two complete editions for some major composers (an old and a new, both of which may be incomplete). The newer one will reflect more current scholarship. Many critical editions are also accompanied by commentaries compiled by the editor and published in a separate, smaller volume, but with the same series number as the main volume. In German, these are called Kritische Berichte (or KB), for critical reports. They are shelved following the main series.
