Introduction
Personal writings - including letters, correspondence, and diaries - from the composer or performer you are researching can be excellent primary sources to add a human dimension to your research and analysis. Interviews and oral histories are another great primary source that can help you study a particular work or musical moment in time through a composer or performer's own words.
This page collects tips for finding letters, diaries, and interviews in the library catalog as well as recommendations for digital archives beyond UIUC where you can browse for similar materials.
Finding Primary Sources Through the Library Catalog
To look for interviews in the library catalog, try a search for the composer or performer you are researching and add "interviews" to your search. If you are just looking to browse, you can also try exploring the following subject heading searches. For a refresher on how to search by subject in the catalog, refer to our instructions on searching for scores & recordings from the finding music materials guide!
Try a subject heading search for:
- Jazz musicians--Interviews
- Pianists--Interviews
- Musicians--Interviews
To look for letters in the library catalog, try a search for the particular performer or composer you are researching try adding terms like "correspondence" or "personal correspondence" to your search.
To get a sense of what kinds of materials are available, browse subject heading searches like:
- Composers--Correspondence
- Compositeurs--Correspondance
For other personal writings, try a search for the performer or composer you are researching and add "diaries", "diary", or (depending on the composer's language and nationality) "journaux intimes".
Local Archival Collections
In addition to checking out the digital archives in the next box, there are also archival materials (including oral histories and diaries!) that you can browse right here at UIUC. Keep in mind that archives work a little differently from libraries - you usually can't just show up without planning ahead.
You may need to coordinate your visit in advance to give the archivists time to pull and prepare materials for you to look at. It's also important to note that archival materials cannot be checked out, you'll have to look at them during your visit, so plan to visit when you have some time to spend with the materials!
To learn more about how to schedule a visit to the archives and what the access procedures look like, check out the University Archive's information about how to plan a visit.
- Doris Duke Indian Oral History Program Archives, 1908-1995The collection includes correspondence, news clippings, publications, field notes and diaries, oral history and interview tapes, and transcriptions, relating to Native American customs, history, music, politics, and religion. The archives also contain an extensive collection of Native American music.
- Sousa Archives & Center for American MusicThe Sousa Archives and Center for American Music (SACAM) acquires and preserves significant archival records and historical artifacts in multiple media formats that document America’s local and national music history and its diverse cultures.
Digital Interview & Oral History Collections Beyond UIUC
There are also many archival collections that have digitized materials you can explore online if you aren't able to travel across the country to consult a particular archive. Check out some of the collections below to listen to interviews and oral histories that are digitally available!
- Oral History of American Music (OHAM) at Yale UniversityOHAM is dedicated to the collection and preservation of the voices of the major musical figures of our time. The project captures musicians’ narratives and reflections in their own words through in-depth interviews. With an ever-expanding collection, OHAM is a living archive, currently comprising more than 3,000 audio and video recordings.
- Smithsonian Jazz Oral History ProgramThe Program seized the opportunity to document more than one hundred senior jazz musicians, performers, relatives, and business associates. Each interview was conducted by a jazz authority and was recorded on digital audiotape by a professional audio engineer. The interviews average six hours in length and cover a wide range of topics including early years, initial involvement in music, generally, and jazz specifically, as well as experiences in the jazz music world, including relationships to musicians.
- Milken Archive of Jewish Music: Oral History ProgramThe Milken Archive was founded in 1990 to document, preserve, and disseminate the vast body of music that pertains to the American Jewish experience. In the time since, the Milken Archive has become the largest collection of American Jewish music ever assembled—roughly 600 recorded works, more than 500 of them world premieres. Additionally, the Milken Archive’s collection contains over 800 hours of oral histories, nearly 50,000 photographs and historical documents, thousands of hours of video footage from recording sessions, interviews, and live performances, and an extensive set of program notes and essays that illuminate the music's historical and cultural context.
- Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and CollectionsThese collections are global in perspective, covering world ethnic performance traditions, spoken word recordings, sounds of science and nature, occupational folklore, and family folklore. The collections are strong in American, and more specifically Euro-American, African-American, Caribbean, and Native American musical and performance traditions.More than 80,000 historical and contemporary items from Rinzler Archives collections are available in the Smithsonian’s Collections Search Center. Find complete collection descriptions in finding aids and inventories in the Smithsonian Online Virtual Archive, which often include digital surrogates.