Digital Concert Hall offers access to more than 700 exclusive concert recordings from the present and past of the Berliner Philharmoniker, as well as concerts, symphonies and vocal works by composers of all eras in the highest audiovisual quality.
For access:
Archive.org provides a collection of more than 596,000 digitized historical audio records, via The Great 78 Project. These holdings grow constantly and make up for only a fraction of the 15 Mio. audio records inside archive.org (02/2024).
Access:
free
Naxos Music Library is the world's largest online streaming portal with an ever-growing collection of classical music. It provides access to the content of more than 170,000 classical CDs. The jazz, world, and pop/rock genres are also represented. The portal brings together the complete catalog of Naxos' in-house labels and over 600 other independent labels. Over 800 albums are added monthly. The text material (mainly in English) includes a wealth of background information such as composer and performer biographies, work details, CD booklets, synopses and opera libretti.
NML also offers audio books for children, podcasts, work details including instrumentation, publisher, duration, year of composition, and available recordings of the work, and more. All other versions of the same piece of music within the portal are linked together and can be viewed in one list. The same applies to the recordings of the same composer. To do this, click the Information button that appears next to the timestamp of the recording you are viewing.
The content can be searched by composer, artist, genre, category and label. The user can search with a normal quick search engine or with an advanced search engine. In addition to listening to recordings, NML also provides accompanying booklets for many albums. Listeners can add tracks to their favorites list and create personalized playlists, or listen to the predefined playlists in the Naxos Music Library. Copyright restrictions may apply.
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Naxos Music Library Jazz (NMLJazz) is a music streaming service specializing in jazz music with more than 25,000 digitized CDs. The repertoire comes from more than 390 music labels, including ACT Music and Vision, Blue Note Records, Fantasy, Jazzwerkstatt, Naxos Jazz, Nonesuch, SWR Jazzhaus and Warner Jazz. Over 32,000 jazz artists' recordings are represented here. Categories include jazz, contemporary jazz, contemporary instrumental, pop and rock, blues and nostalgia.
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The Naxos Video Library (NVL) contains more than 3,700 videos of recordings of operas, concerts, ballet performances, and music documentaries. All categories represented: Opera, Concert, Ballet and Dance, Master Class/Lecture/Interview, Documentary, Class, Competition, Theater, Jazz, Visual Arts, Feature Film, Musical Journey, World, Recordings, Monuments/History/Geography.
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British Periodicals contains full texts of popular science, art, literary, and musicological British periodicals from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. This database provides access to the searchable full text of more than 450 of periodicals from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries and includes millions of high-resolution facsimile page images. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, social sciences, music, art, theater, archaeology, and architecture. Our users have access to Collections I and II, which contain the most important titles from the holdings of over 100 libraries worldwide.
British Periodicals Collection I consists of more than 160 periodicals comprising UMI's Early British Periodicals microfilm collection, the equivalent of 5,238 printed volumes containing approximately 3.1 million pages. Subjects covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, fine arts, and social sciences. The British Periodicals Collection II consists of more than 300 periodicals from the UMI microfilm collections English Literary Periodicals and British Periodicals in the Creative Arts, as well as other titles totaling nearly 3 million pages. Topics covered include literature, music, art, drama, archaeology, and architecture. Due to the large number of documents in the database, we encourage our users to use the advanced search (see drop-down menu) for better results.
For access:
You may look for e-books via KatalogPlus. E-Books, which had been bought or licensed for the library, can be accessed via the individual publishers' user platforms. If you want to do this from home, you have to use VPN that connects you to the HfMT network. Alternatively, you may access the titles from library computers. Should you be recognized as a HfMT Cologne User and still do not get access to a source, this indicates that the library hasn't bought the respective title. In such cases, you may file a purchase request.
Some publishers offer additional technical features on their platforms (such as personalized "book-shelves"), for which you need to register an individual user account, in order to be able to use it. Manuals on the respective platforms will guide you through this process.
HfMT Cologne provides e-books via the following publishing platforms:
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The Elektronische Zeitschriften Bibliothek (EZB) is one of the largest databases on electronic scientific journals. In 2018, it had over 9 million title accesses and is used and processed by almost all major libraries in the German-speaking world. The EZB is operated and further developed by the University Library of Regensburg. In 2021, the EZB offered its users the metadata of more than 108,000 journals in as many records. Each of these journal records also contains a hyperlink that leads directly to the website of the desired journal, where the full texts of the individual volumes can be read. More than half of the journals offered are accessible online free of charge. The remaining full texts are accessible for a fee charged by the publishers - but also to users of a library that has licensed the desired journals for its users.
The access to the texts follows a visual traffic light system
Library users can access the journals licensed by their library either on computers within the library or via VPN.
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IBTD is a fully indexed database of over 60,000 journal articles, books, book chapters, and dissertation abstracts on all aspects of theater and performance in 126 countries. It contains more than 490 full-text titles, including more than 170 full-text journals and more than 360 full-text books and monographs.
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Periodicals Archive Online is a comprehensive archive that provides back issues of electronic journals in the humanities and social sciences, providing access to full text of a growing number of digitized journals indexed in its sister database Periodicals Index Online. Currently, Periodicals Archive Online includes over 700 journals with more than 3 million articles and 15 million article pages. Periodicals Archive Online is constantly adding new titles, giving first-year and senior students, faculty members, and libraries access to a growing collection of the most important journals in the humanities and social sciences. In addition, two thematic collections of 75 titles (History and Literature) and four smaller thematic collections of 25 titles each (History, Literature, Philosophy and Religion, and Spanish Language) are available. All titles in the thematic collections are also part of the General Collections.
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The database, based on the Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), lists international literature on all areas of musicology and related fields. Monographs, dissertations, festschrifts, films and videos, articles from more than 10,000 journals, catalogs, congress contributions, concert reviews, etc. are listed. The database includes over 850,000 bibliographic references, most of which are enhanced by abstracts - many publications available as full text. Since 2017, the database has included the RILM Retrospective Abstracts of Music (includes music material published before 1967).
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Over 700 full-text electronic journals published by Sage Publications are offered, covering a wide range of subjects. Current access to volumes 1879 - 2016.
For access:
Online edition of the music dictionaries: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nd ed.) - the most important English-language music encyclopedia worldwide, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (2nd ed.). The articles are included in full text and also offer links to audio files with music examples, to additional illustrations and to topic-related sites of other providers on the Internet (composer portraits, music publishers, record labels, orchestras, etc.). Grove Music Online currently contains more than 60,000 articles, the contents are regularly revised and supplemented. Belongs to: Oxford Music Online.
For access:
Munzinger Pop, the Pop Archive International, describes the life and career stages, musical origins and orientation, successes and flops of artists and bands from all over the world. The great old, the wild young, stars and promising newcomers, hard rockers and hip-hoppers, jazz and blues legends, reggae, soul and funk bands, trendsetters, exotic independents: In addition to the more than 1,900 biographies, factual articles explain the most important musical styles and technical terms. Munzinger Pop is updated and expanded monthly.
For access:
Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, or MGG for short, the most important German-language musicological reference work, bears the subtitle "General Encyclopedia of Music."
MGG offers in-depth articles on every area of music, as well as on many related fields such as literature, philosophy, and the visual arts. MGG Online comprises the second print edition of MGG (MGG2, published 1994 to 2008), the content of which is continuously updated and expanded in the online version.
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RILM Music Encyclopedias is a collection of 45 encyclopedias in full text, internationally between since 1775. For example: The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Hugo Riemanns Musik-Lexikon, Handwörterbuch der musikalischen Terminologie and Komponisten der Gegenwart. RILM Music Encyclopedias provides access to musicological research content in English, German, French, Italian, Czech, Dutch, Greek and Slovak.
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The World Biographical Information System Online (WBIS Online) includes about 8.4 million biographical articles on more than six million persons from about 8,600 reference works published from the 16th to the beginning of the 21st century. The biographical archives included each take into account different language and cultural areas.
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The International Music Score Library project aims to create a virtual library of all public domain musical works, as well as a score collection of contemporary composers who would like to make their works available to the world for free.
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The GNU-licensed Community Database for the Open Source Software MuseScore. Attention: Content that has been found and shared here is not necessarily in the public domain! Please individually check licenses, before you use anything!
Further information on the notation software "MuseScore" itself, are described below. A comprehensive software documentation and all available features can be found here.
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nkoda is a "streaming service" for sheet music and offers the complete range of almost eighty sheet music publishers such as Boosey & Hawkes, Ricordi, Bärenreiter or Breitkopf & Härtel. Available are licensed scores and parts for almost every instrument.
The following functions are offered:
Please first download the app from the appropriate download store(AppStore, GoogelPlay, Microsoft) or here, then proceed with the institutional Sign-In Process for members of HfMT Cologne.
For access:
In the Digital Collections of the Library of the Cologne University of Music and Dance, digital copies of selected titles from the library's rare book collection are available to all interested parties free of charge.
The core of the historical holdings, which amount to around 3,500 media and include titles from the library collections of the Hochschule für Musik's predecessor institutions, are valuable music transcripts and autographs from the estates of Erich Verkenius, Otto Jahn, Ernst Otto Lindner, and Franz Commer. There are also isolated specimens from the private collections of some Cologne patrons and important personalities who significantly influenced Cologne's musical life in the 19th century and made the existence of the Rhenish Music School and later the Conservatory possible - Ferdinand Hiller, Franz Heuser, Wilhelm Heyer. Rara sheet music without special provenance or direct reference to Cologne history has also been digitized.
This collection is currently under construction. The digital inventory is continuously being expanded.
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RISM is an international joint venture with the goal of comprehensively documenting the world's surviving sources on music.
International Encyclopedia of Musical Sources
The data on Series A/II: Music Manuscripts after 1600, previously published as a CD-ROM or internet database, are included in this online catalog. The database offered lists approximately 900,000 references (as of April 2015; updated monthly) almost exclusively of music manuscripts after 1600 by approximately 30,000 composers. It contains the complete description of each manuscript, including searchable music incipits in musical notation (pitch search only). The sources are held in over 800 libraries and archives of 32 countries. RISM's database is the most comprehensive tangible documentation in the field of music manuscripts to date and continues to grow through regular updates. The addition of further RISM series is planned.
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Collection of digitized european cultural artifacts (primarily written sources). Active maintenance of the database ended in 2022. However, a large quantity of data is still accessible.
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BMS (Bibliographie des Musikschrifttums) Online is an international, interactive and freely usable bibliography for musicology.
Currently, the BMS lists more than 360,000 publications related to music. Books, essays and reviews from journals, festschrifts, congress reports, yearbooks, anthologies and critical reports of musical editions are taken into account. The BMS editorial staff evaluates national bibliographies, professional journals and special bibliographies as sources.
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This historical journals index allows bibliographic research in about 4,800 journals from the humanities and social sciences under one interface.
The time span covered ranges from 1739-2000, with publications in more than 37 subject areas and in over 40 languages and dialects. Full-text journals included in Periodicals Archive Online are linked directly from the bibliographic record
For access:
The database, based on the Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), lists international literature on all areas of musicology and related fields.
Monographs, dissertations, festschrifts, films and videos, articles from more than 10,000 journals, catalogs, congress contributions, concert reviews, etc. are listed. The database includes over 850,000 bibliographic references, most of which are enhanced by abstracts - many publications available as full text. Since 2017, the database includes the RILM Retrospective Abstracts of Music (includes music material published before 1967).
For access:
RISM is an international joint venture with the goal of comprehensively documenting the world's surviving sources on music.
The data on Series A/II: Music Manuscripts after 1600, previously published as a CD-ROM or internet database, are included in this online catalog. The database offered lists approximately 900,000 records (as of April 2015; updated monthly) almost exclusively of music manuscripts after 1600 by approximately 30,000 composers. It contains the complete description of each manuscript, including searchable music incipits in musical notation (pitch search only). The sources are held in over 800 libraries and archives of 32 countries. RISM's database is the most comprehensive tangible documentation in the field of music manuscripts to date and continues to grow through regular updates. The addition of further RISM series is planned.
For access:
The ZDB is the world's largest database for title and ownership records of serialized collected works, i.e., journals, newspapers, etc. This includes not only print works, titles of electronic journals can also be found. The ZDB contains more than 1,000,000 titles in all languages from 1500 to the present day and lists the holdings of approximately 4000 German libraries for these titles. A targeted search for electronic journals in a specific subject area with full text accessible free of charge is possible. The ZDB does not list article titles.
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The Database Information System (DBIS) is a cooperative service for the use of scientific databases and currently comprises more than 12,000 entries sorted by subject.
Of these, more than 5,000 databases are freely available via the Internet such as full text and article databases, bibliographies.
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The German Digital Library bundles public domain digital objects from cultural assets at German cultural institutions. Among a total of more than 50 million objects (as of 02/2024) are, for example, scans of sheet music, recordings of digitized sound carriers and digital images of physical objects enriched with metadata, such as historical musical instruments.
The pan-European counterpart to the German Digital Library is called Europeana.
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The Fachportal Pädagogik is the central entry point to scientific subject information for educational research, educational science and educational practice.
The portal integrates, for example, FIS Bildung, pedocs and the Fachinformationsdienst Erziehungswissenschaft und Bildungsforschung.
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The KVK (Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog) is a comprehensive search interface for library and book trade catalogs on the Internet worldwide in which over 500 million media are listed.
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Musiconn, has replaced the Virtual Library of Musicology (ViFaMusik) since March 12, 2020.
musiconn is the brand of the "Fachinformationsdienst Musikwissenschaft" project funded by the German Research Foundation. It is a central information portal for music and musicology and offers you extensive and fast access to academic research and a wide range of specialist information and internet resources.
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The GNU licensed program Ardour is continuously developed by volunteers as an alternative to expensive professional recording, mixing and audio editing software. In contrast to the "Ready-to-Run" program, the source code is available free of charge and may be used under the specified license. Rudimentary programming knowledge is recommended for users of this software.
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LilyPond is a music notation system. The declared aim is to produce printed music of the best possible quality. The program makes it possible to achieve the aesthetics of hand-engraved traditional music notation with computer-engraved music. LilyPond is Free Software and part of the GNU project.
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Software application for the MuseScore Community database, which has already been mentioned under "Scores".
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TuxGuitar is a free music notation and sequencer program for creating, viewing and playing tablatures and music notations. The program is written in Java and is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License.
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