Guides: Chamber Music in the Fennell Music Library: Browsing by Instrumentation

Searching the catalog

You can do a basic search in the catalog for the instrumentation you're looking for
- For example, if I am looking for a trio for violin, horn and piano I can type those instruments into the search box and know what the library has
  - One downside to this method is that it will pull up other items that have more instruments than just those

As you can see, after limiting to just scores, we have 87 items in the collection that contain the words "horn," "violin," and "piano"
If you wanted to limit results even further, you could use the right subject heading, which in this case would be: Trios (Piano, horn, violin)
- This gives us even fewer results, with 14 items that have the subject heading attached

Subject headings are standardized terms used in the library catalog to denote certain things about an item
- In the case of music, it often shows the instrumentation of a piece, and/or its genre
Most of the terms used in the library catalog are defined by the Library of Congress, although we do use some locally defined headings as well
The rules can be confusing to understand, but if you want to learn more about how it works visit this page: Yale University Music Cataloging
- Essentially, for music with just one instrument the subject heading is just the name of the instrument with the word "music" after it
  - Like violin music, cello music, etc.
- For 2 or more instruments, the instruments are listed in the following order
  - First by familiy
    - Keyboard
    - Wind
    - Plucked strings
    - Percussion and miscellaneous instruments
    - Bowed strings
    - Unspecified instruments
    - Continuo
  - Then within each family by alphabetical order
    - Except for strings! These are in score order
  - For example, for music for flute and guitar the heading would be "Flute and guitar music"

Some of the more common instrumentations have easy subject headings:
- String quartet: String quartets
- Piano trio: Piano trios
Other instrumentations may have less intuitive headings:
- Flute quartets: Woodwind quartets (Flutes (4))
- Sextet of 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, and 2 horns: Wind sextets (Bassoon (2), clarinet (2), horn (2))