Oxford Music Online is the gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. Oxford Music Online contains Grove Music Online; The Oxford Companion to Music, which offers more than 8,000 articles on composers, performers, conductors, instruments and notation, forms and genres, and individual works; and The Oxford Dictionary of Music which supplements Grove's more extensive articles with content geared toward undergraduates and general users.
You can access Oxford Music Online by clicking on the Databases A-Z box on the Libraries homepage.
Then find Oxford Music Online in the list of databases.
Once in Oxford Music Online you can search for the composer at the top right of the screen. In this example I will search for Claudio Monteverdi. After performing a search you will see several limiters on the right hand side of the screen such as limiting the the Type "Biographical Article".
You should choose to limit to biographical entries. Now your result list includes only biographical entries that include mention of Claudio Monteverdi. Remember that you should only select those that are actually about your composer by clicking on entries where your composers name is the title of the entry. Once you have selected one of the entries you will come to a biographical article about the composer will include the life history of the composer. Sometimes this is broken down into stylistic periods of the composers life or even where the composer lived during certain times of their lives (both of these are very important to think about for this project). There may also be sections that provide listings of works by the composer. After reviewing this, you should know where your composer lived during the time that they composed a particular piece and possibly some insight into the uniqueness of what was going on in that area at the time.
