Teaching music research: Four textbooks compared

Recent years have brought several new textbooks for courses in music research — a standard component of graduate music curricula for decades. The four volumes under review draw on the extensive teaching experience of three librarians and two musicologists, each bringing deep knowledge of reference sources and music scholarship. While all four contain excellent music reference materials, they differ in their selection of sources, detail level, and general approach. Studying these textbooks alongside their pedagogical strategies inevitably raises questions about the core purpose and methods of music research classes. Is the main goal simply to introduce students to library resources? How can novice scholars learn the research process? What fundamental skills should students in such courses develop?

The challenge of keeping pace with digital change

Producing textbooks about music research in this era demands a certain amount of courage, since electronic media have thoroughly reshaped research, scholarship, and student life. Any textbook risks becoming obsolete, but those focused on research resources are especially exposed. Indeed, these volumes — some only three or four years old — all mention websites that have since disappeared or been drastically changed, through no fault of their authors. In A Guide to Library Research in Music, Pauline Shaw Bayne hails "metasearching" as an upcoming feature, yet it is now standard on many library websites. The oldest of the four books, Richard Wingell and Silvia Herzog's Introduction to Research in Music, was published over a decade ago and omits resources central to contemporary research, such as Grove Music Online and JSTOR. Its discussion of the RAM needed for online research will strike twenty-first-century students as antiquated as a medieval manuscript — though it would be unfortunate if that detail distracted readers from the volume's otherwise valuable contents.

Setting aside these unavoidable inaccuracies, most forms of electronic resources (beyond basic subscription indexes for music periodicals) remain the elephant in the room across all these textbooks. Ironically, Wingell and Herzog's volume, the oldest of the group, divides research sources into "print" and "electronic," with the latter appearing in a well-organized chapter of fundamental websites, many still active. Sampsel's comparable chapter, though far less strictly music-oriented, is more current. Sampsel's book also directs readers to a companion website on oup.com that provides some updates and additional sources, but it primarily offers live links for websites listed in the print volume; the updates seem to date from 2008. Apart from a short mention of Wikipedia's lack of traditional editorial oversight, Bayne's organization compresses web resources into half a chapter titled "Other Discovery Methods: Experts and the Internet." Jane Gottlieb's Music Library and Research Skills also leans toward print materials, though web-based sources do appear in her lists. None of this is to suggest that such a focus is wrong: music students should certainly recognize that peer-reviewed scholarship in music continues to be published in monographs and other formats that are often unavailable (at least until next week) on their Kindles. What these texts lack is a full explanation, in language students can grasp, of how the discipline's scholarly processes do — or do not — align with what researchers can most easily access on their phones, and why they should engage with library stacks and hardcover books. Today's student needs stronger reasons to believe the fine reference tools and searching suggestions offered here are actually relevant. Unfortunately, the textbooks are often written as though students already understand the context for producing music scholarship and merely require a list of reliable places to search.

Bred from the bibliography tradition

Besides the elephantine internet, ghosts haunt these books — particularly those of Vincent Duckles and Ida Reed, editors of the massive music bibliography Music Reference and Research Materials, which has been a primary text for many music research courses for decades. Such courses are often called music "bibliography" courses rather than "research" courses, conceived as a survey of basic reference tools and secondary scholarship to be mastered. Instead of producing original research papers, students in these classes typically create annotated bibliographies. The idea driving this approach is that a "core literature" exists with which every student must become familiar.

Three of the textbooks show signs of this teaching style. Gottlieb's and Sampsel's books are largely organized by source type: chapter headings cover bibliographies of literature and music, dictionaries and encyclopedias, discographies, thematic catalogs, and so on. Bayne's volume opens with reference sources and a discussion of the writing process, followed by details of searching techniques, then an overview of music literature heavily focused on the Library of Congress Classification system. In all three books, large sections consist primarily of bibliographic citations. Most provide citations within chapters (with varying degrees of annotation), while Bayne collects all sources in a back-of-book bibliography. Across all four textbooks, some sections consist of prose to be read, while other sections contain bibliographies to be consulted; problems arise when authors switch rapidly between the two modes. The prose in both Bayne's and Gottlieb's texts frequently breaks down into lists that are not reader-friendly.

Bayne usefully marks reference sources she finds especially valuable with asterisks, though this might imply to readers that unstarred entries are somehow less important. Gottlieb's text emphasizes "famous" historical sources, including substantial works like Johann Tinctoris's Diffinitorum musices, Charles Burney's A General History of Music, and François-Joseph Fétis's Biographie universelle. The result is often odd pairings: for instance, Michael Praetorius's seventeenth-century Syntagma Musicum appears alongside the New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Uninformed students may lack the critical framework to recognize important distinctions between historical sources and contemporary scholarship, nor may they develop fundamental concepts about reference tools when bibliographies and indexes are mixed with secondary sources such as books and articles — as happens in the bibliographic section of Wingell and Herzog's book.

Sampsel's representative bibliographic offerings are well balanced and not overly broad, and they come with boxed checklists for evaluating various types of tools. The volume includes many helpful illustrations of library catalogs, databases, search engines, and webpages, and the author's annotations are consistently readable and practical. Yet the rationale behind the selection of sources is not always clear: why, for example, would music majors engaged in research need citations for several music appreciation books intended for nonmusicians? Here, the concept of a core body of sources all students "should know" — including pedagogical works — seems to override the research skills needed to find materials relevant to an individual student's interests. Teachers seeking a book that is primarily a bibliography of reference sources and secondary scholarship might also consider Phillip D. Crabtree and Donald H. Foster's Sourcebook for Research in Music (2005, updated in a second edition by Allen Scott). This volume contains excellent glossaries of publishing, research, and foreign-language terms (as well as Library of Congress and Dewey classification schemes) but does not claim to be anything more than a basic bibliography.

Overall, the books reviewed here — or large portions of them — focus more on sources and bibliography than on research skills. At times they feel like miniaturized, updated versions of Duckles and Reed rather than pedagogical texts — essentially "Duckles light." The notable exceptions are Bayne's central section on subject headings and keyword searching, and Wingell and Herzog's Introduction to Research in Music, of which less than half is source-oriented. The second half of Wingell and Herzog centers entirely on the writing process: establishing a thesis, outlining, proper citation procedures, concluding with a sample scholarly article and commentary on its organization and tone. Much of Introduction to Research in Music is therefore a writing and style guide. However, it is the most expensive textbook among the four reviewed. Instructors concerned about students' budgets could instead choose Sampsel's Music Research together with a good writing book — such as The Craft of Research, The Elements of Style, or even Jonathan Bellman's slightly pricier A Short Guide to Writing about Music — and their students might pay significantly less for their course materials.

Biases in repertoire scope and audience

Over the past few decades, the explosion of topics beyond the classical canon has similarly expanded students' potential research interests. The idea that a large, central body of tools exists (beyond a handful such as Grove Music Online and periodical databases) with which all graduate music students must be familiar can be questioned. While the textbooks under review will suit many students, each betrays a distinct bias toward the Western European classical canon; Sampsel even includes in an appendix a list of the twenty-three composers (all European except for Charles Ives) she uses as examples. One can readily imagine that students wanting to research hip hop or Bollywood film music will find these resources far less helpful than those interested in Bach or Mozart. These texts do include some non-Western and popular music sources, but because such works appear less frequently, they seem anomalous — as when a discography for the Pet Shop Boys jarringly sits between entries for the New York Philharmonic and Sergei Rachmaninoff. There is little suggestion that students might participate in scholarship not centered on published sources, such as interviewing living composers or analyzing YouTube videos; "music research" and "music library research" are treated as synonymous here.

The volumes also suffer from ambiguity about their intended audience. Large portions of Gottlieb's Music Library and Research Skills would be more appropriate for a future music librarian than for an average graduate student, with repeated forays paying homage to the careers of important music bibliographers. Gottlieb sometimes provides helpful definitions of terms, yet her choices can be problematic. She defines "bibliography," which students might already know, but not "classified," which students may assume refers to secret government documents. In several volumes, unfamiliar terms (such as "Festschrift") appear many times before they are explained. The most helpful parts of Gottlieb's book may be the boxed "real life scenarios" that thoughtfully and reliably answer typical student questions about locating a specific item or handling a research problem. Yet on other occasions, the realities of average students are overlooked. Gottlieb's broad opening chapter plunges into the entire world of libraries — including the internet, Worldcat, a list of major research collections worldwide (with bibliographies of writings about them in various languages), indications of how RISM C can help locate manuscripts, and basic cataloging practices (subject headings, uniform titles) — not to mention a section on citation style and writing guides. This sweeping overview clearly aims to widen students' horizons, but it could be entirely overwhelming for first-semester master's students with possibly limited foreign-language skills who need to locate appropriate sources for a term paper in a music library larger than their undergraduate college library. Accustomed only to Google-based searching, many still need to learn basic library catalog use, not to read German articles on the history of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.

Shifting from tools to process

Wingell and Herzog's book shows sensitivity to the real problems students face, offering many examples of typical mistakes in both searching and writing. But their framework for research is primarily musicological, revealed by the long, richly illustrated chapter on "The History of Notation, Publishing, and Printing," which sits between the bibliographic and writing sections of the volume. (Gottlieb's volume also includes material on music printing.) This chapter concentrates on pre-Baroque sources and may not interest instructors who do not include such material in their courses. A later section on archival research begins with the example of holdings of the Berlin Singakademie after their relocation to Ukraine and subsequent availability for research — a fine case for a musicologist with travel funding, but perhaps not the most relatable example for a beginning saxophone major. Wingell and Herzog explain admirably how performers, composers, and music educators (not only musicologists) have contributed to music scholarship, but the explanation may strike some students as somewhat condescending.

Despite strong content and good intentions, the texts under review often get tangled in their source-driven approach. A course in research should aim not just to teach a list of tools but also to equip students with the skills to use them. Students may become baffled by the huge number of abbreviations and acronyms found in reference works; they may need to be taught to seek out the lists explaining them — something none of the four volumes emphasizes. While these texts themselves serve as excellent bibliographic tools, none does an outstanding job of explaining the overall research process to inexperienced students. Their authors would have done well to consider the approach (if not the specific content) of John Druesedow's now somewhat dated Library Research Guide to Music: Illustrated Search Strategy and Sources, which follows an actual student project throughout the book, making it as much about the research process itself as about "the literature." Bayne's focus on library cataloging produces good explanations of how subject headings, uniform titles, and keyword searching function; her book includes helpful charts guiding students in constructing Boolean searches. Sampsel includes "Search tips," but her Boolean diagrams and information about truncation are hidden in an appendix at the end of the book rather than highlighted where students would more likely find them.

An alternative for instructors wishing to teach searching skills is Thomas Mann's The Oxford Guide to Library Research, which is organized by type of search strategy rather than type of reference tool and explains in detail how and why each approach works. Yet this book, too, has become outdated, and since it is not specifically about music, students may not immediately see its relevance. Still, at less than half the price of the cheapest of the four music texts considered here, it deserves consideration.

Given the bibliographic focus of these volumes, the eventual goal of all research — the creation of new knowledge or, for less mature students, the synthesis of existing ideas — sometimes becomes completely overshadowed. All four books dutifully include guidance on making citations, style lists, and writing guides, but just as they emphasize the "what" over the "how" of research, Bayne, Gottlieb, and Sampsel seem less interested in the outcome of the enterprise. Among the four textbooks, Wingell and Herzog's best emphasizes the creative nature of research and the necessity of developing ideas. Bayne's book does address the nature of student projects and the challenges of producing original research, but unfortunately, her sample student assignments — such as program notes — do not serve as strong role models. Such samples need to resemble actual student work, presenting achievable models for fledgling scholars. When examples still require editing, it becomes hard to communicate best practices. Finally, none of the four volumes considers that the results of student research might take any form other than a conventional term paper — for instance, a PowerPoint presentation or a website.

All four textbooks will certainly inform students about the range of resources available for music scholarship. But students and instructors looking for a practical guide to navigating the complete research journey may find themselves missing something that does not fit neatly into bibliographic form.