MGG Online

Extensive Coverage of All Music Disciplines

MGG Online is the preeminent digital encyclopedia for music researchers worldwide. It features the second edition of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, a reference work that has supported music scholarship since 1949, now with regularly updated and newly written articles. Dynamic both in content and access, MGG Online has been developed by Bärenreiter and J. B. Metzler in partnership with Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM).

Innovative Content
More than 18,000 biographies cover composers, singers, and instrumentalists, including non-Western writers and performers, as well as figures from jazz and popular music. Instrument makers, musicologists, theorists, publishers, and visual artists are equally strongly represented, alongside philosophers and literary figures. Many articles include works list—renowned for their detail and completeness—and carefully curated bibliographies.

Within its over 1,300 subject articles, MGG Online covers areas ranging from aesthetics and theory to periods and genres, from instruments and manuscripts to rock ‘n’ roll. Unrivaled among music encyclopedias, it also contains conceptual explorations of music and history, literature, iconography, the arts, and the humanities and natural sciences, along with comprehensive surveys of countries, cities, and institutions—from opera houses to music libraries.

Continual Updates

Bärenreiter and J.B. Metzler employ some of the world authorities in each area of music, as well as up-and-coming experts in emerging fields: Hundreds of articles have been or are in the process of being revised, updated, or newly written. Since its launch in November 2016, hundreds of articles have been updated or rewritten, and new articles in the areas of popular music, jazz, contemporary composers and performers, singers, new media, gender studies, the United States, and Canada have been added.

Innovative Technology

Residing on RILM’s platform, MGG Online features highly sophisticated search capabilities and tools of exploration. Like the content, the platform is being enhanced on an ongoing basis.

Current features include:

The most advanced search and browse functions
Traceable browsing history, facilitating easy reference to previously viewed content
Sortability of works lists, bibliographies, discographies, and other lists
Easy switching between current and older versions of each article
A bilingual English/German interface and instant translation from German into over 100 languages through integrated Google Translate
Links to related content in RILM Abstracts of Music Literature and other resources
An interface compatible with mobile and tablet devices
A timeline

Visit rilm.org/mgg-online/ for subscription information or to request a free 30-day trial for your institution.

Testimonials

“All encyclopedias are only as good as the quality of their individual articles but the greatest encyclopedias are based on an editorial policy that encourages and supports a process of constant revision. Every year sees dramatic changes in the contemporary musical landscape as well as the evolution of an increasingly sophisticated and nuanced view of the past.
MGG Online is uniquely placed to be at the forefront in disseminating new knowledge about music. The new digital online platform for MGG will dramatically increase its use around the world and is to be applauded. This new accessibility to the vast repository of scholarship MGG contains will be welcomed enthusiastically by academics, musicians, students, and music lovers alike.”
(Allan Badley, University of Auckland, in: Fontes Artis Musicae, Volume 64, Number 3, July-September 2017)

權威音樂百科全書MGG電子版的面世，讓學者可以隨時隨地瀏覽和搜尋資料。電子
版加上「谷歌翻譯」，衝破語言界限，擴闊音樂知識領域。
“The authoritative music encyclopaedia, MGG, is now available online so that scholars can easily browse and search information anytime and anywhere. The online platform uses Google Translate to break the language barrier so that more scholars can now read this authoritative work.”
(Daniel Chua)

“For more than 25 years I worked in the book business. I firmly believe that MGG Online is one of the greatest contributions all times made by a publishing house.”
(Josef Mittendorfer)

“I entered graduate school in 1967 and grew up with MGG, fighting not only with the German before I gained reading fluency, but straining my eyes over the multiple and minuscule fonts and reading the run-on bibliographies with an index card to keep my place … I welcome with great pleasure the arrival of the second edition of MGG to my computer screen. I know it will, as it always has in paper form, enhance and inform my work. I speak for all of my colleagues in thanking you all for this wonderful gift of scholarship.”
Ellen T. Harris, ehemalige Präsidentin der American Musicological Society

“MGG represents an accumulation of the long history and depth of research in German speaking musicology. MGG Online will be an invigorating resource for musicologists all over the world, across time and space, in this global age.”
(Hee-Sook Oh, Professor of Musicology, Seoul National University)

“For more than half a century “Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart” has served musicologists, musicians, and music lovers alike as the first resource one reached for when in need of reliable information. Until today, it continues to tower over all competitors in the depth and breath of its coverage. The MGG Online, in particular, with its ease of search, integration into the site of automatic translation into multiple languages, and, above all, the constantly updated and added entries, remains the single most indispensable source of information in the field of music.”
(Karol Berger, Osgood Hooker Professor in Fine Arts at the Department of Music, Stanford University)

“The new MGG online is a wonderful resource for ethnomusicologists. It makes a wide range of scholarship on ethnomusicological topics—especially the contributions of European scholars—easily available to researchers all over the world. The translate capability, while not without its limitations, is seamlessly integrated into the MGG interface and expands its utility for non-German readers. MGG is an excellent place to start any research project.”
(Henry Spiller, Professor (Ethnomusicology) and Chair, UC Davis)

“Tatsächlich stellt die MGG nach wie vor die erste Adresse für Leser dar, die an sorgfältig dargestelltem Wissen über Musik interessiert sind.”
Christiane Tewinkel, Barenboim-Said Akademie, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2. Januar 2019.