Tips for Searching for Vocal Music 

This guide sorts vocal music selections into that for Classical Voice, Jazz Voice, and Musical Theater. Vocal music in the library is sorted by genre, and is not necessarily particular to instrumentation as is the music for instrumentalists. 

Scores for classical voice are divided into sacred and secular categories. Resources for jazz voice can be located with call number ranges associated with jazz and popular music arrangements. Additional resources include the fake books and Jazz special collections. See the Jazz Studies page for more jazz specific resources. Sheet music for vocal music in the musical theater genre can be found in the popular music category. 

When searching for a specific vocal piece or arrangement, use the UNT Library website advanced search setting to find the best results. If you are looking for music for a specific voice type, look for keywords like "high", "med", or "low" in the call numbers.

Phrase Searching for Titles

Sometimes it is easiest to search for titles with several keywords instead of conducting a Title search. We have found with foreign language titles that we often obtain good results by conducting a Phrase search, which means starting and ending the title with quotation marks. Phrase searches keep a string of words in the same order. For example, search Ma Rendi Pur Contento by Bellini. You will likely get results leading you to a collection of songs. Click on the title, you you will likely find your Phrase search for the title in the contents list, like in this collections titled Liriche Italiane: liriche del XIX e XX secolo [translated: Italian art songs: songs from the 19th and 20th centuries]:

Fakebooks

Students have access to real and fake books from our collection. These books contain a variety of lead cheats and chord charts of jazz standards from The Great American Songbook. Real and fake books can be checked out for two hours at a time for use inside of the library. The collection is browsable when the Soundbox is open.

When searching for this online, you will likely find that fake and real books have a location of "Willis 4FL Music Fake Book." 

To browse for items in this collection online, try entering the following term in the "subject" field when conducting an advanced search:

Jazz — Fake Books

WFAA, WBAP, Popular Song, and Octavo Collections

The Music Library has a substantial collection of stock arrangements of sheet music from when musicians performed live on local radio stations. This collection is not physically browsable and is part of our Music Special Collections. These items can be requested for view onsite. These items will have call numbers that begin with WBAP, WFAA, ORCH, or SONG.

General Resources for Vocalists

This section of the voice guide originates from the University of Indiana Vocal Music Guide. We really like the variety and specificity this guide includes, and we could not have produced it better ourselves. For more information and details like this, please refer to the University of Indiana Vocal Music Guide.

Additional Resources

We encourage you to visit the subject guides for Voice:

The Vocal Music Guide

 Musical Theater 

We encourage you to visit the following sources in your search for repertoire:

Music by Black Composers

Boulanger Initiative 

CIM Programming Advisory Resource Guide

If UNT does not have what you need, you can request items through Interlibrary Loan. Items in public domain can also be found on IMSLP. Even more resources are available on the Guide for Music Research.