3 Resources

Many different resource types play a role in the study of music, for example:

• Documents – different types of writings that inform musical scholarship
• Images – iconographical sources (visual images) and moving images that are associated with musical practices and that cast light on the performance and reception of music
• Places – environments and landscapes and their musical associations
• Repertories and musical sources – manuscript and printed sources, musical repertories and genres
• Instruments – issues concerning organology and performance practice
• Performances and recordings – the study of music as performed, and in particular the use of recorded sound as a source for music research.

In this section you will explore examples of all these resource types, before looking at ‘west gallery’ music to see how study of a particular topic may draw on a number of these.