Each year the Music Library subscribes to a number of databases so that music students and faculty have free access to online scores, recordings, video, books, and articles. This article highlights a couple of databases that feature contemporary music.
BabelScores, based in France, promotes contemporary music from the past few decades. The composers are international, though there is an emphasis on composers from Europe. Users may browse by composer name or date, or search by performing forces, publisher, world region, and technical difficulty. Yale users have access to online scores (over 130,000 pages) and streaming audio.
DRAM is a non-profit resource for streaming audio at CD-quality. At the heart of DRAM lies a diverse catalog of American music previously published by New World Records and CRI. In addition, DRAM provides access to the archives of 42 independent labels, such as Albany and New Haven’s own Firehouse 12. DRAM is an important source of contemporary music and jazz, as well as music of America’s historical past. It is easy to browse by composer, performers, ensembles, instruments, and record labels, or to search within these categories as well as by album title, work title, or track title. DRAM also reproduces complete liner notes for the recordings, which provide information on the creation of the works and performances.
We’d like to know what you think of these databases – send us your comments!