Publications

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A dictionary of Australian music

This is the first comprehensive reference work on Australian music. With just over 1400 entries written by 125 authorities on the subject, the dictionary covers a wide spectrum of topics, from ancient Aboriginal traditions and European-derived orchestral, operatic, and concert music, to Australian folk, jazz, country, popular, rock, electronic, and experimental music. There are entries on major historical and contemporary figures, including those who have achieved worldwide fame, such as Peter Allen, Percy Grainger, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Kylie Minogue, Barry Tuckwell, Charles Mackerras, and the three great divas: Nellie Melba, Joan Hammond, and Joan Sutherland. Leading orchestras and ensembles are represented, as well as major pop and rock groups, among them the Seekers, the Bee Gees, AC/DC, and Midnight Oil. In addition to entries on individual composers, performers, and musical works and instruments, the dictionary covers leading musicologists, critics, broadcasters, educators, and researchers. The dictionary thus considers and reflects the diversity of music on the Australian continent.

Pays: Australie

Langue: anglais

Sujet: musique traditionnelle, musique populaire, compositeurs, histoire générale de la musique, instruments

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A dictionary of music and musicians (A.D. 1450–1880)

A dictionary of music and musicians is the first edition of Sir George Grove’s eponymous music encyclopedia (now continuously updated as Grove Music Online). When the first volume was published in 1879, Grove intended to only publish two volumes, but as work on the dictionary continued, the size of the dictionary expanded to four. In this first edition, Grove limited the content of his dictionary to Western music composed after 1450. Unlike contemporaneous dictionaries such as those compiled by Fétis and Riemann, Grove’s did not isolate articles on persons and terms into separate volumes; rather, each volume contains articles on composers, performers, musical terms, music theory, instruments, and musical institutions and societies. Although the dictionary is comprehensive in coverage and international in scope, Grove noted in his Preface that he had thought it “right to treat English music and musicians with special care”. Grove, who trained as a lawyer and was self-taught as a music critic, wrote many of the articles himself, most notably the biographies of canonical composers such as Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schubert. He also commissioned articles from over 50 writers spread across England, America, and continental Europe. The writers included highly trained amateurs, similar to himself, and music librarians and professors at conservatories and universities. As the first edition of the longest-running and most comprehensive English-language encyclopedia of Western music, A dictionary of music and musicians is an invaluable historical document.

Pays: États-Unis

Langue: anglais

Sujet: histoire générale de la musique

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A dictionary of the avant-gardes

The encyclopedia by Richard Kostelanetz, an independent writer, filmmaker, and performing artist, brings together a wealth of information on aesthetic innovation in the arts, including music, film, literature, the visual arts, dance, and theater. The artists included were mainly active in the 20th century, with no birth date earlier than Edward Lear's (1812–88). They include such well-known subjects as Charles Ives, John Lennon, Igor Stravinsky, Edgard Varèse, and contemporary figures as environmental-artist Christo and performance-artist Laurie Anderson. The entries for Kinetic Art, Serial Musk, Mixed-Means Theater, Zaum (poetry), SoHo, and Something Else Press create a rich image of a period. The second edition is enlarged and revised, with an added photo insert. It makes the avant-garde art easily accessible to au courant researchers and fills a gap in reference collections.

Pays: Royaume-Uni

Langue: anglais

Sujet: musique du XXe siècle

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A survey of musical instruments

Building on Curt Sachs’s Real-Lexikon, but using a systematic rather than alphabetical order, Sibyl Marcuse’s compendium focuses on musical instruments of the Western world and considers to some extent their non-Western counterparts. Structured on the organological classification devised by Erich von Hornbostel and Sachs, it is divided into four parts: Idiophones such as the triangle, xylophone, bells, scrapers, rattles, and the Jew's harp; membranophones, covering a wide range of drums and drum-like instruments; chordophones of a broad variety from ground zithers to player pianos, harps to double basses; and aerophones such as flutes and reed pipes, and the organ. Marcuse omits the fifth section in the Hornbostel-Sachs system—electrophones. For each instrument, Marcuse provides its history and morphology with emphasis on the instrument’s evolution as a mechanical device for producing sound and playing techniques. The vast amount of knowledge conveyed is rooted in the study of primary sources: musical treatises, literature, iconographical evidence, and archival documents. Marcuse includes countless facts that are also of interest to those not engaged in the study of instruments: for example, the Ferrarese chancellor Bernardo Prospero wrote about Spanish musicians in Italy who, in 1493, played viols about as large as a man; a manuscript notation made about 1536 by the unidentified owner of a 1515 cookbook reveals how Alfonso della Viola preferred to tune his viol—both fascinating facts with possible implications about a number of aspects of performing practice in the 15th and 16th centuries. (Neither of these names is listed in the index of the printed book, but they can be conveniently found through a keyword search in RILM Music Encyclopedias).

Pays: États-Unis

Langue: anglais

Sujet: instruments

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Annals of opera, 1597–1940

With Annals of Opera (1st ed., 1943; 2nd ed., 1955) the German-born British musicologist Alfred Lœwenberg (1902–49) created a monumental work that contains information on 4,000 operatic works. It details premieres and international performances of operas from Monteverdi's day to 1940. In the print edition, individual entries are organized by country, subdivided by composer and opera, and specify title, details of the premiere, librettist and source of libretto, cast list, conductor, director, and other key aspects related to production and performance history. The author himself was aware of the daunting task, introducing it as “a skeleton history of opera, in dates and fact” (Preface). But it is more than that, as it provides all basic facts on opera. The third edition is in essence a reprint of the previous ones, with revisions and updates by Harold Rosenthal (Loewenberg died before the completion of the second edition). Edward J. Dent, who wrote the preface to the third edition, states that “Some alterations and fairly numerous corrections have been made, and many new dates and other facts added from the author’s notes. Further corrections from other sources have been accepted and incorporated, but essentially the Annals remain Loewenberg’s work, presented here as far as possible in his own revision. No attempt has been made to carry the records beyond 1940”. Operas that have been recently revived or performed in newer versions are marked with an asterisk. Although the volume contains only a fraction of the operas performed between 1597 and 1940, it is still the most comprehensive listing for this time period: an exhaustive work, indispensable as reference book. Similar in format, but including some 60,000 titles, is Franz Stieger’s Opernlexikon.

Pays: États-Unis

Langue: anglais

Sujet: opéra et théâtre musical

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Band music notes

This informative volume on the subject of music for bands and band music composers was written by Norman E. Smith and his colleague Albert Stoutamire. Smith (1921⁠–1998) was born in Missouri. A B-17 pilot during World War II, after the war, he received a master's degree in Music Education from Southwest Louisiana Institute (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) in 1950 and a PhD from Florida State University in 1968. Smith was the McNeese band director from 1954 to 1964. He retired in 1978 as Professor Emeritus. Stoutamire (1921–2002) was educated at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, at Columbia University in New York, and at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He worked as composer and also held lectureships at various academic institutions, including at McNeese where he succeeded Smith as band director in 1965. The revised edition of their reference work is the result of two years of work, which Smith began just before his retirement from McNeese. The volume provides a comprehensive foundation and is widely used as a primary source of information about composers and compositions of band music.

Pays: États-Unis

Langue: anglais

Sujet: musique d’harmonie

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Biographical dictionary of Afro-American and African musicians

With the Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African musicians, Eileen Southern (1920–2002), who served on the faculty of Harvard University and before 1971 was known primarily as a Renaissance scholar, created a long-needed resource and a major research tool. It is the first single comprehensive volume of its kind that "attempts to correlate materials" concerning Afro-American and African professional musicians "from a historical perspective" (Preface). It contains information on well over 1,500 figures, the earliest being Sebastian Rodriguez, born ca. 1642, an African drummer who was active in Mexico and died in El Paso; the birth cutoff date is 1945 (with some obligatory exceptions, such as Kathleen Battle and Wynton Marsalis). Coverage is not limited to the United States and Africa. Sixty-five musicians from Canada, South America, and Europe are included as well. This is not another dictionary confined to jazz musicians, gospel performers, or those engaged in minstrelsy; it is a survey of the lives of black men and women who have contributed to any aspect of musical history, and as such an enormously useful reference book.

Pays: États-Unis

Langue: anglais

Sujet: interprètes

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Biographical dictionary of Balkan composers

Biographical dictionary of Balkan composers offers a comprehensive look at the lives and works of 500 composers from countries such as Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia, Croatia, and others and from various periods, from the 19th century to the turn of the century. The entries—conceived by a team of authors, translators, and editors—offer insights into the composers’ musical achievements, providing information on key compositions and their contributions to the development of music in the Balkans, documenting their education, stylistic evolution, and major works. The dictionary highlights how Balkan composers have drawn from a unique blend of local traditions, Byzantine liturgical music, and Western classical forms to create a distinctive regional repertoire. It also explores the socio-political context in which these composers worked, as well as how national identity and political changes in the Balkans influenced their music. This dictionary is complementary to the Enciklopedia e muzikës shqiptare, Leksikon jugoslavenske muzike, and Muzička enciklopedija, which together make RILM Music Encyclopedias an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the cultural and musical history of the Balkans, illuminating the richness and diversity of this often underrepresented region in music scholarship.

Pays: Albanie

Langue: anglais

Sujet: histoire générale de la musique

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Biographical dictionary of musicians, with a bibliography of English writings on music

This single-volume dictionary was compiled by the English librarian James Duff Brown (1862–1914), an early advocate of public music libraries. It features short entries devoted to performers, composers and their works, and instrument makers, and it gives special prominence to British musicians, including many minor figures. As Brown notes in the Preface, he has included only those foreign musicians who either “claim attention by their acknowledged eminence” or have a direct connection with Britain. The entries on many living musicians were revised and corrected by the musicians themselves, with whom Brown corresponded. The volume includes a bibliography of British writings on music, organized by subject. With its emphasis on British musicians and the bibliography of British writings, this dictionary is particularly useful for scholars of 19th-century British musical life.

Pays: Royaume-Uni

Langue: anglais

Sujet: histoire générale de la musique

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Biographical dictionary of Russian/Soviet composers

With more than 2000 composers (including a supplementary list of composers with over 1300 additional names, each with dates and compositions) and a discography listing over 3400 items, the Biographical dictionary of Russian/Soviet composers is an essential volume for scholars and students of Russian and Soviet music. It is a major addition to the reference field, filling a sizable gap in up-to-date information on Russian and Soviet music before 1989, and is especially useful for scholars who do not possess a reading proficiency in Russian. It is the ideal supplement to other standard sources, as it contains information on many lesser-known composers, not found in other English reference works. The dictionary is an essential source of reference for the more obscure byways and some of the highways of Russian and Soviet music.

Pays: États-Unis

Langue: anglais

Sujet: compositeurs

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