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).
This three-volume encyclopedia provides a wealth of primary source material on the American theater organ, an instrument designed for the movie theaters of the silent film era that has now all but disappeared from American pop culture. The first two volumes contain articles about organ manufacturing companies. The third volume is devoted to “the mighty Wurlitzer”. Each entry is documented with primary source material such as photos, company records, stop lists, advertisements, drawings, and interviews and correspondence with organ makers. In addition, Junchen has provided an opus list detailing the histories of all of the organs built by each company. These materials will prove indispensable to anyone researching popular music in the silent-film era.
This biographical dictionary chronicles all the master craftsmen involved in instrument making in New York City, from the obscure work of Geoffry Stafford in 1691 to the zenith of the 1890s, and on to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Many of the 1095 detailed entries focus on nineteenth-century makers, when the city was the largest producer of instruments in the Western Hemisphere, and designs and innovations pioneered by New York artisans influenced and inspired instrument makers throughout the world. Aside from providing a record of these instrument makers, the dictionary offers a historical study of an urban trade that is ultimately tied to the growth and development of the city.
Sibyl Marcuse’s dictionary incorporates most of Sachs's material published in the Real-Lexikon, revises and expands it where necessary, and adds a vast number of new entries with copious cross-references leading the reader to additional information. Indeed, Marcuse offers thousands of entries on instruments from prehistoric times to the electronic instruments of today, and from all over the world. Entries include definitions and descriptions of instruments used in the Orient, Africa, the Americas, Polynesia, and beyond, as well as a broad treatment of instruments of the Western world. Marcuse has gone out of her way to offer information on instruments from remote places: the ha, a musical bow of the African bushman; the lumbambam, a small cylindrical drum, and the ndingi, a wooden cowbell, both of the Congo; the wurumbumba, a musical bow of the Congo and Angola; the abeng, a cane pipe of the Gabon Republic played through one nostril; the yurupuri, a wooden trumpet played in pairs by youths of the Amazon valley, and the xaque-xaque, one of a number of different Brazilian rattles; the bum-bum, a musical bow of Honduras; the ehecacozcatl, a shell trumpet of the pre-Columbian Toltec culture; the yan-ljin, the Tibetan cousin to a dulcimer; the wani-guchi, a ritual gong hung at the entrance to Japanese shrines and struck by worshippers; the zuffolo, a whistle flute of Lombardy; the zurrumbera, a bull-roarer of northern Spain; the German wurstfagott, a "sausage bassoon"; the abilosen adar, a Basque horn sounded at night to frighten away wild animals; and the eunuch flute found in Europe and resembling the kazoo (which is also called the bazoo). Marcuse’s comprehensive approach includes eclectic noisemakers, from signaling devices and bull-roarers to walkingstick violins, raft zithers, humming tops, and pibgorns. All entries are cross-referenced, etymologies are offered, and the foreign-language equivalents of the English terms are entered alphabetically in their own right. The plates of the 1964 edition show various instruments, well reproduced. In its comprehensiveness, the dictionary is indispensable for musicians, musicologists, ethnomusicologists, and curators. Anthropologists, archaeologists, sociologists, and other researchers will find much useful information as well.
