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The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

The document provides a history of the development of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians/The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians through eight editions from the late 19th century to the present. It details the major editors and revisions for each edition, expansion in coverage especially of 20th century composers, and the digital transition and integration into Oxford Music Online. Criticisms of factual errors in the second edition and initial online presentation are also noted.

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João Fama
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2K views3 pages

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

The document provides a history of the development of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians/The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians through eight editions from the late 19th century to the present. It details the major editors and revisions for each edition, expansion in coverage especially of 20th century composers, and the digital transition and integration into Oxford Music Online. Criticisms of factual errors in the second edition and initial online presentation are also noted.

Uploaded by

João Fama
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians


The second edition (Grove II), in five volumes, was edited by Fuller Maitland and
published from 1904 to 1910, this time as Grove's Dictionary of Music and
Musicians. The individual volumes of the second edition were reprinted many times.
An American Supplement edited by Waldo Selden Pratt and Charles N. Boyd was
published in 1920 in Philadelphia by Theodore Presser.[1] This edition removed the
first edition's beginning date of 1450,[4] though important earlier composers and
theorists are still missing from this edition. These volumes are also now freely
available online.[5] [6]

The third edition (Grove III), also in five volumes, was an extensive revision of
the 2nd edition; it was edited by H. C. Colles and published in 1927.[7] The 3rd
edition was reprinted several times. An American Supplement was published in the
U.S. in 1927, and also later reprinted separately.

An extra-large Supplementary Volume also edited by Colles was published in 1940 and
called the fourth edition (Grove IV).[1][8] A reprint of the 3rd edition with some
corrections, was released at the same time. The five-volume 3rd edition, with the
Supplementary Volume as volume 6, and the American Supplement of the 3rd edition as
volume 7, were reprinted together as a set in 1945.[9]

The fifth edition (Grove V), in nine volumes, was edited by Eric Blom and published
in 1954. This was the most thoroughgoing revision of the work since its inception,
with many articles rewritten in a more modern style and a large number of entirely
new articles. Many of the articles were written by Blom personally, or translated
by him. An additional Supplementary Volume prepared by Eric Blom and completed by
Denis Stevens after Blom's death in 1959, was issued in 1961. The fifth edition was
reprinted in 1966, 1968, 1970, 1973, and 1975[10], each time with numerous
corrections, updates, and other small changes.[1]

The New Grove


First edition
The next edition was published in 1980 under the name The New Grove Dictionary of
Music and Musicians and was greatly expanded to 20 volumes with 22,500 articles and
16,500 biographies.[11] Its senior editor was Stanley Sadie with Nigel Fortune also
serving as one of the main editors for the publication.

It was reprinted with minor corrections each subsequent year until 1995, except
1982 and 1983. In the mid-1990s, the hardback set sold for about $2,300. A
paperback edition was reprinted in 1995 which sold for $500.

ISBN 0-333-23111-2 – hardback


ISBN 1-56159-174-2 – paperback
ISBN 0-333-73250-2 – British special edition
ISBN 1-56159-229-3 – American special edition
Spin-offs
Some sections of The New Grove were also issued as small sets and individual books
on particular topics. These typically were enhanced with expanded and updated
material and included individual and grouped composer biographies,[12] a four-
volume dictionary of American music (1984; revised 2013, 8 vols.),[13] a three-
volume dictionary of musical instruments (1984),[14], a four-volume dictionary of
opera (1992).[15], and a volume on women composers (1994)[16].

Second edition
The second edition under this title (the seventh overall) was published in 2001, in
29 volumes. It was also made available by subscription on the internet in a service
called Grove Music Online.[17] It was again edited by Stanley Sadie, and the
executive editor was John Tyrrell. It was originally to be released on CD-ROM as
well, but this plan was dropped. As Sadie writes in the preface, "The biggest
single expansion in the present edition has been in the coverage of 20th-century
composers".

This edition has been subject to negative criticism (e.g. in Private Eye) owing to
the significant number of typographical and factual errors that it contains.[18]
Two volumes were re-issued in corrected versions, however, after production errors
originally caused the omission of sections of Igor Stravinsky's worklist and
Richard Wagner's bibliography.

ISBN 0-333-60800-3 – British


ISBN 1-56159-239-0 – American (cloth: alk.paper)
Publication of the second edition of The New Grove was accompanied by a Web-based
version, Grove Music Online. It too, attracted some initial criticism, for example
for the way in which images were not incorporated into the text but kept separate.
[citation needed]

Grove Music Online and Oxford Music Online


Currently, the complete text of The New Grove is available to subscribers to the
online service Grove Music Online.[19] Grove Music Online includes a large number
of revisions and additions of new articles. In addition to the 29 volumes of The
New Grove second edition, Grove Music Online incorporates the four-volume New Grove
Dictionary of Opera (ed. Stanley Sadie, 1992) and the three-volume New Grove
Dictionary of Jazz, second edition (ed. Barry Kernfeld, 2002), The Grove Dictionary
of American Music and The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments,[20] comprising a
total of more than 50,000 articles. The current editor-in-chief of Grove Music, the
name given to the complete slate of print and online resources that encompass the
Grove brand, is University of Pittsburgh professor Deane Root. He assumed the
editorship in 2009.[21]

The dictionary, originally published by Macmillan, was sold in 2004 to Oxford


University Press. Since 2008[citation needed] Grove Music Online has served as a
cornerstone of Oxford University Press's larger online research tool Oxford Music
Online, which remains a subscription-based service.[22] As well as being available
to individual and educational subscribers, it is available for use at many public
and university libraries worldwide, through institutional subscriptions.[23]

Grove Music Online identifies itself as the Eighth Edition of the overall work.[1]

Status
The New Grove is often the first source that English-speaking musicologists use
when beginning research or seeking information on most musical topics. Its scope
and extensive bibliographies make it exceedingly valuable to any scholar with a
grasp of the English language.[24]

The print edition of The New Grove costs between $1,100 and $1,500,[25] while an
annual subscription to Grove Music Online as of 23 October 2009 is $295.[26]

The companion four-volume series, New Grove Dictionary of Opera, is the main
reference work in English on the subject of opera.

Its principal competitor is the Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart ("MGG"),


currently[when?] ten volumes on musical subjects and seventeen on biographies of
musicians, written in German.

Contents
The 2001 edition contains:
29,499 articles in total
5,623 entirely new articles
20,374 biographies of composers, performers and writers on music
96 articles on theatre directors
1,465 articles on styles, terms and genres
283 articles on concepts
805 articles on regions, countries and cities
580 articles on ancient music and church music
1,327 articles on world musics
1,221 articles on popular music, light music, and jazz
2,261 articles on instruments and their makers, and performance practice
89 articles on acoustics
693 articles on printing and publishing
174 articles on notation
131 articles on sources
Hoaxes and parodies
Two non-existent composers have appeared in the work:

Dag Henrik Esrum-Hellerup was the subject of a hoax entry in the 1980 New Grove.
Esrum-Hellerup's surname derives from a Danish village and a suburb of Copenhagen.
[27] The writer of the entry was Robert Layton. Though successfully introduced into
the encyclopaedia, Esrum-Hellerup appeared in the first printing only: soon exposed
as a hoax, the entry was removed and the space filled with an illustration.[12][28]
In 1983, the Danish organist Henry Palsmar founded an amateur choir, the Esrum-
Hellerup Choir, along with several former pupils of the Song School, St. Annae
Gymnasium in Copenhagen.[29]

Guglielmo Baldini was the name of a non-existent composer who was the subject of a
hoax entry in the 1980 edition. Unlike Esrum-Hellerup, Baldini was not a modern
creation: his name and biography were in fact created almost a century earlier by
the renowned German musicologist Hugo Riemann. The New Grove entry on Baldini was
supported by a fictional reference in the form of an article supposedly in the
Archiv für Freiburger Diözesan Geschichte. Though successfully introduced into the
encyclopaedia, Baldini appeared in the first printing only: soon exposed as a hoax,
the entry was removed.[12]

Seven parody entries, written by contributors to the 1980 edition, and full of
musical puns and dictionary in-jokes, were published in the February 1981 issue of
The Musical Times (which was also edited by Stanley Sadie at the time).[30] These
entries never appeared in the dictionary itself and are:

Brown, "Mother" (Mary) (b. 1550; d. Wapping, 3 January 1611)


Ear-flute
Hameln [Hamelin]
Khan't, Genghis (Tamburlaine) (b. Ulan Bator, c. 1880; d. New York, 22 November
1980)
Stainglit (Nevers), Sait d'Ail (fl Middle Ages) – i.e. "Stanley Sadie", following
the example of Luis van Rooten
Toblerone
Verdi, Lasagne ['Il Bolognese'] (b. Bologna, 10 October 1813; d. Naples, 15 March
1867)

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