Publications

The Großes Sängerlexikon (usually briefly cited as Kutsch/Riemens, after its founding editors) is considered the world’s most comprehensive dictionary of singers—the famous, the less well-known, and the almost forgotten—from all over the world, active in opera, operetta, oratorio, religious and art song, and other mostly Western classical forms of vocal music. Karl Josef Kutsch (b.1924), a collector of records and singer biographies, and the Dutch musicologist Leo Riemens (1910‒85) started this endeavor in the 1950s. After Riemens’s death, the high school teacher Hansjörg Rost (b.1942) played a major role, becoming an official coeditor in 1994. The fourth edition is updated and vastly expanded, especially when compared with the 429-page first edition (1962). It spans seven volumes that contain nearly 20,000 biographies of singers from the 16th century to the present. The detail is unique: Each biographical article contains stage name, common name, register of voice, and biographical dates. This information is followed by details on the artist’s background and musical career organized by places of work, major works, a short list of biographically significant engagements and appearances, a voice characterization and, in the case of major artists, bibliographical details and references to recordings. The Großes Sängerlexikon is remarkable not only for the vast scope of its material but also for the extensive period of time and variety of genres that have dominated the art of singing since the late 16th century—opera, oratorio, aria, cantata, lied, religious vocal music—whilst remaining as up-to-date as possible. It is the standard reference work for any lover of singing.

The Komponisten der Gegenwart is the only music lexicon that focuses exclusively on 20th- and 21st-century composers. Musicologists Hanns-Werner Heister and Walter Wolfgang Sparrer founded the lexicon in 1992 and conceived it in loose-leaf format to ensure that its content could be continuously updated and expanded. It currently contains biographical and work-related information on about 850 composers. Each entry is divided into two sections: the first is biographical, providing an overview of life and achievement; the second is work-oriented, with information on aesthetic and compositional technique based on historical and analytical assessment. Over 200 entries feature exhaustive works lists, selective discographies, and curated bibliographies. The KDG contains a wealth of information, especially on lesser known composers who have recently emerged; it is unique as it is updated quarterly (these updates are included in RILM Music Encyclopedias), thus being not only a bestseller but a longseller.