Swiss Music Journals at e-periodica.ch

A growing number of historic and current music journals can be found at large aggregate sites devoted to publishing journals online. Some of these sites are nationally oriented and cover a wide variety of disciplines. Others may be sponsored by an institution, including universities and conservatories. Some of these aggregates which I monitor and use to identify electronic journals for MusRef include e-periodica.ch, unibo.it, iremus.cnrs, and digizeitschriften.de.

This post will draw attention to e-periodica, a Swiss effort to make a wide variety of publications available for free online. The music offerings include publications dating from the early 20th century to the recent past. Some of these publications are useful as historic primary sources, while others offer relatively recent musicological research. The e-periodica site is careful to document the history and evolution of periodical titles over time. For example, the information page for the Schweizer Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft outlines the history of the periodical dating back to the Mitteilungen that first appeared in 1934. The information page also provides a link to the current sponsoring organization for the journal.

The music journals currently offered in e-periodica.ch and indexed in MusRef can be found at this link. As a side note, the journal for modern music Dissonance is currently available at a separate website, but the current site indicates back issues of Dissonance will soon be accessible at e-periodica.ch.