Country Dance & Song Society > Resources > Audience

Category: Audience

Early American Secular Music and Its European Sources, 1589-1839: An Index

This is a series of indexes derived from a database of musical information compiled from primary sources covering the 250 years of the initial exploration and settlement of the United States. It consists of over 75,000 entries that are sorted by text (titles, first lines, recitatives, chorus and burden), by music incipits (represented in scale degrees, stressed notes and interval sequences), with additional indexes of names and theater works.

Compiled by Robert M. Keller, Raoul F. Camus, Kate Van Winkle Keller, and Susan Cifaldi

Early American Songsters, 1734-1820: An Index

This resource is an index of all of the known songsters currently available. Lowens defines a songster “as a collection of three or more secular poems intended to be sung.” Most of the songsters do not include music, although many contain references to the names of tunes to which the song could be sung. References to where to find the songsters is provided.

Compiled by Robert M. Keller

Canadian Folk Music Archive

Canadian Folk Music is a journal published by the Canadian Society for Traditional Music containing articles, notices, reviews, and commentary on all aspects of Canadian folk music.

The Performing Arts in Colonial American Newspapers, 1690-1783

This publication fills a major gap in access to eighteenth-century American sources for research in the performing arts and related humanities fields. It includes all references to music, poetry (lyrics), dance, and theater in American newspapers, from the earliest extant copy (1690) through the end of the Revolutionary War (1783).

Compiled by Mary Jane Corry, Kate Van Winkle Keller, and Robert M. Keller

Amidon Choral Music

Peter and Mary Alice offer more than 30 (and adding more all the time) free downloads of sheet music of accessible choral arrangements, mostly a cappella SATB, that are steeped in traditional music. Most are Amidon arrangements; there are a few by other old and new composers and arrangers, including a selection of classic American shape note songs.

From Peter and Mary Alice Amidon 

The Music Box

The Music Box is an extensive searchable online database of more than 2500 songs that includes information on the song (where it can be found in songbooks, composers, song genre, culture) as well as a way to listen to recordings of the song by various artists.

From Rise Up and Sing