Research guides:

What they are:

Research guides can give you overall information about the Collected Works editions for a specific composer including:

a) The history of specific collected works editions, key people and organizations involved in their establishment and development.

b) The impact of non-musical events upon the publication of the collected works edition.

c)  Critical apparatus chosen for the collected works edition.

d) Special problems encountered in creating the collected works edition.

e) Letters and manuscripts

f) Important books and articles

Each research guide is organized differently.  Information on Gesamtaugabe can be found under “Gesamtausgabe" or "Works" or "Editions" in the Table of Contents or in the index.  Watch the use of numbers which may refer to page numbers or listing numbers.

See Example:  "CPE Bach Research Guide Example"

How to find them:

• ​​Do a SUBJECT search for the composer and look for items with the following subheadings or limit your search by the SUBJECT WORD:  "Bibliography"
  • Example:  
    • SUBJECT search in the VASSAR LIBRARY-SEARCH CATALOG  ADVANCED SEARCH: 
      • Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel  then look for "Bibliography"

• Don't do a KEYWORD search for "Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel Research guide" 
  • This will only work if the words "Research Guide" is used in the title--NOT ALL DO!

What they are:

"A thematic catalogue is an index to a group of musical compositions that incorporates citations of their opening notes (incipits), or principal melodic features (themes), or both."    Thematic Catalogues, Grove Music Online

Generally they contain the following for each composition:

• Title 
• Opus no. or other identifying no.
• Instrumentation
• Source of text for works with text
• Date/place of composition (EZ: Entstehungzeit = date of origin)
• Incipits of each mvt (including no. of measures)
• Location of autograph mss
• Location/description of 1st ed. and significant early eds., especially those published
• During composer's lifetime
• Citation for collected works (For example: "HHA" Hallische Händel-Ausgabe)
• Bibliography of literature about the composition

An article regarding the edition (particularly a review) may also give you a great deal of the information you need for this assignment.

How to Find articles about editions:

• Music Periodicals database (formerly: International Index to Music Periodicals Full-Text)

This resource indexes, abstracts and/or provides selected full text for many scholarly and popular music journals.

For example do a KEYWORD search: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach "The complete works" review

• RILM Abstracts of Music Literature (1967-current)

This link will take you to Ebsco databases. Do a "find " command using your browser to find "RILM".

Clear, verified bibliographic information, fully cited, abstracted, and indexed. RILM Abstracts turns up citations for both print and electronic sources. Covers scholarly periodicals, dissertations and chapters of books in a variety of languages.

For example do a KEYWORD search: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach "The complete works"

• Full-text databases of journal issues are often thought of as indexes:

Both of the following databases of articles are not indexes, but they include selected music journals and allow searching by keyword only.  This means that you can not search by subject and you may miss materials if you do not select a word used in the article entry. Also their coverage is not as extensive as the indexes mentioned above.

• JSTOR​

Example: KEYWORD: Review Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach The complete works