Scan 6
The New Encyclopedia Of Music And Musicians, 1929
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1PREFACE
3The original proposal for this work, as outlined by the publishers to the editor whom they had selected, was to make a one-volume abridgment of the six volumes of the well-known 'Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians', including the 'American Supplement' that was added in 1920. To this plan, however, there were many obvious objections, so that it was early abandoned in favor of what was believed to have promise of much greater permanent utility.
5The conclusion reached was to draft an entirely fresh work of more inclusive character, aiming to combine as far as possible the essential values of the several lines of dictionary-making in the musical field which have hitherto been developed without being fully related to each other. This conclusion seemed the more inevitable because of the increase in the literature since 1904–10, when the revised edition of the original 'Grove's Dictionary' was issued. Since 1910, for example, no less than four editions of Riemann's monumental 'Musik-Lexikon' have appeared, the latest of which (1922) is so recent that its richness of information and suggestion has as yet not been utilized in any similar work in English.
7It was evident that a comprehensive book of reference in a single volume of about a thousand pages was unpractical unless designed and executed with unusual care and system. The plan actually adopted involves some points that require statement in advance. It was decided to distribute the material in three distinct divisions, each with its own alphabet and each followed by an appendix giving additional data in shape for easy consultation. The first of these divisions deals rapidly with the forms and terms of musical art in both a descriptive and a historical way, followed by a survey of the vast field of bibliography as concerns the principal topics. The second division gives the essential biographical and statistical facts about some 7500 musicians of all countries who have been active during the past two hundred years, followed by a classified summary of the work of about 1000 others before the year 1700. The third division presents succinctly a large body of facts about the organizations and institutions in over two hundred cities and towns throughout the musical world, including some information not before thus gathered together, followed by a chronological list of operas and oratorios that have been produced in these and other places since 1900.
9The decision to limit the detailed biographies to the period since 1700 was made with reluctance. Yet only thus could the book be made in any sense international or could emphasis be thrown, as was desired, upon musicians now living or who were at least born within the 19th century. Experiment showed that the main facts, with many complete lists of works, could be given without the use of perplexing abbreviations and yet including more than twice as many names as are found in the original volumes of the Grove series—more, indeed, than are usually included in such dictionaries in English. In such a plan, of course, there can be nothing to match the elaborate monographs on certain great composers that have given high distinction to dictionaries like those of Grove or Mendel. The light emphasis upon persons prior to 1700 is also a distinct loss, though it is likely that those wishing to explore this earlier part of music-history will naturally turn to a fuller record than any one-volume book can hope to give. As to the extent to which it has been practicable to make the present volume both interna-
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