the new grove

The New GroveAuthor(s): Denis ArnoldSource: Acta Musicologica, Vol. 54, Fasc. 1/2 (Jan. - Dec., 1982), pp. 1-6Published by: International Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/932357 .

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Der dreizehnte Kongret der Internationalen Gesellschaft fiir Musikwissenschaft

Vom 29. August bis zum 3. September 1982 wird der dreizehnte KongreB unserer Gesellschaft in Strasbourg stattfinden. Nach dem Kongre1? in Berkeley 1977, mit dem ein bedeutsamer Schritt zu echter Internationalitait und zu interdisziplinarer Offnung der Musikwissenschaft getan wurde, kehren wir damit nach Europa und in die Kulturlandschaft zuruck, in der unsere Gesellschaft auch ihren offiziellen Sitz hat. Diese Riickkehr soil jedoch kein Riickschritt zu einer europazentrischen Haltung sein: die Absicht, die in Berkeley begonnene Entwicklung weiterzufiihren, demonstriert nicht nur das Generalthema des Kongresses - Musik und Zeremonie, geistlich und weltlich -, das kultur- und geschichtsiibergreifend verstanden werden soll, sondern auf die gliicklichste Weise auch die Wahl des Kongretortes, einer Stadt, die seit je im Schnittpunkt geschichtsmichtiger kultureller Prozesse lag und die auf besondere Weise geistig und geistlich gepriigt worden ist. Und es mag als ein gutes Omen ffr den KongreB gelten, dag er in Frankreich stattfinden wird - einem Land, in dem das Neben- und Miteinander von Musikgeschichtsforschung und Musikethnologie, Detailarbeit und Systemdenken eine besonders reiche und fruchtbare Tradition hat.

Ich habe die Ehre und das Vergniigen, alle Mitglieder und Freunde unserer Gesellschaft nach Strasbourg einzuladen. Gern benutze ich die Gelegenheit, schon jetzt den vorbereitenden Komitees - dem Programmkomitee unter dem Vorsitz von Madame Nanie Bridgman und Madame Claudie Marcel-Dubois sowie dem Organisationskomitee unter dem Vorsitz von Marc Honegger - fuir ihre Arbeit den herzlichsten Dank zu sagen. Au revoir a Strasbourg! Ludwig Finscher

The New Grove' DENIS ARNOLD (OXFORD)*

The sixth edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians has long been awaited. The fifth edition was already inadequate when it was published in 1954, nor was the issue of a supplementary volume in 1961 more than a modest palliative. There were rumours of an English translation of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. This would have been welcome to many non-German-reading scholars, although whether it could have been undertaken successfully is open to doubt: the

1 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. STANLEY SADIE (London 1980). * EDITOR'S NOTE. A comprehensive survey, Musicology in Great Britain since 1945, was published in Vol. 52 (1980) of this journal (p. 38-68), covering work published up to 30 June 1979. The first comprehensive supplement to it is planned to cover publications from then up to 30 June 1982. Since The New Grove is such a landmark in British musicological publishing, consideration of it in this supplementary survey would not only be too long delayed but would inevitably overshadow the other publications discussed there. The decision was taken, therefore, to have it discussed separately, and the present article is the result.



2 D. Arnold: The New Grove

early volumes have become out-of-date because of the astonishing amount of research done in the decades since their publication, while the nature of musicological writing in German sometimes makes it peculiarly difficult to render in English, as the separately issued translation of Blume's articles on Renaissance and Baroque shows. In the event, the act of courage by the publishers, Macmillan, has been

triumphantly vindicated by The New Grove. The title is apt. It is justified by more than the fact that 97% of the material in The

New Grove has not been derived from former editions: the conception of a musical

encyclopedia has been thought out anew. Even so, it owes a great deal both to

previous editions and to MGG. The audience for earlier editions of Grove was

essentially the ordinary music lover who wished to find out the meaning of music

terminology as well as information about the works, composers and performers who

appeared on his concert programmes. This attitude is still maintained. Over half of the articles (though not of the encyclopedia as a whole) are about composers; performers are more than adequately covered (the entries include many on present- day performers of only modest distinction); while musical terminology is still treated thoroughly (MGG seems to take for granted in its readers a greater basic

knowledge of this aspect). MGG was designed from the first primarily as a

musicological tool. Medieval music, the periodization of musical history, the

philosophical concepts that animated composers, the problems of notation and

editing are all treated there with a thoroughness not found in earlier encyclopedias. It is a great merit of The New Grove that it has taken this into account.

These dual functions inherited from former editions of Grove and from MGG mean that The New Grove approaches more nearly the claim made by the editor of the fifth edition, Eric Blom, that it tried to be both encyclopedic and universal. 'Universal' in The New Grove means more exactly 'global.' Whereas former editors were very strongly orientated to the musical traditions of Western Europe, there is now a substantial increase in articles on music outside this tradition. There is no area of the world that does not receive attention. Arabian music is treated in 25

pages, China in 37, Japan in 47, while African music has a general introduction of nine pages and is then treated by individual countries. As a corollary of this, 'Western' music also is treated more systematically. There are ample entries for countries: Germany is given 23 pages, Italy 30, France 22 and the USA 27, while the article on the USSR (so denominated, but in practice eleven separate articles joined together) covers 90 pages. (These figures exclude the specialized bibliographies given for the various countries.) The division made between art and folk music in these articles is sensible, because the two do not necessarily impinge greatly on each

other; although one link between them, the accentuation and development of

language, vital for the understanding of song of every kind, tends to remain undiscussed.

The articles on countries, although usually giving some essential historical

background, concern themselves with music rather than institutions, but this lack is largely made up in the articles on cities, surely the most complete coverage of local musical institutions available today. The large cities with considerable histories of



D. Arnold: The New Grove 3

music-making are treated expansively. Paris is given 40 pages, which deal thoroughly with medieval churches, the development of court music, the theatres and orchestras of the 17th and 18th centuries, the organization of music at Versailles and the roles of the different opera houses in the 19th century, as well as the current situation. The article is slightly sketchy on the Napoleonic era, nor does the article on France fully cover this gap; nevertheless, between them they provide an admirably full historical account. Similarly complete treatment is accorded to London (75 pages), including very full coverage of current institutions. There are also many articles on smaller cities. The article Germany cross-refers to no fewer than 75 cities treated independently; England, a comparatively centralized state from an early date, receives 35 such articles (although some of these deal-reasonably, given local customs-with festivals rather than with the places themselves); and the USA receives 25. Some of these articles tend to concentrate on recent and existing institutions at the expense of earlier history, which is a pity when such places were the seats of small courts in the 17th and 18th centuries, as so often in Germany. But such articles as those on Leipzig, Munich, Manchester and Chicago usefully supplement the entries on their countries by giving balanced surveys, including the essentials of political history, the growth of institutions and the listing of important performances and influential persons. Much of this information has been available hitherto only in local antiquarian literature or ephemera (such as catalogues of exhibitions and newspaper reports), so it is very welcome in this wider context.

The trend towards musicology (as opposed to the older, generalized function of Grove) is evident in the selection and treatment of 'person' entries. The preface makes this clear by establishing the following criteria:

Virtually every known medieval composer is entered; and a composer of the Renaissance will have an entry if a set of his works was published, if five or more of his works survive in printed anthologies or a substantial number in manuscript, or if he is known by a smaller number of works but in addition useful biographical information is available about him.

For later periods the criteria are based less on quantified information and more on critical judgment concerning the importance of individual figures. The concentration on the 19th century evident in previous editions of Grove, simply because it originally reflected the interests of its founder, has thus disappeared. Whether it has been replaced by a similar bias towards the 20th century could only be determined by a count of the number of entries and their length. A general impression is that it may have been.

The major composers are treated at length: Beethoven receives 40 pages plus 24 pages of work-list and bibliography, Mozart 27 plus 45, Haydn 46 plus 32, J. S. Bach 33 plus 21, and so on. The method is usually a biography followed by an ample discussion of the music. The space allows not only a general discussion of style and working methods but also some excursions into detail, such as the listing of the items in the three versions of Beethoven's Fidelio or the extended appraisal of Schubert's stage music, while the dating of Bach's music in both the text of the article and the work-list is invaluable.




Recent progress in research is even more noticeable in the articles on major figures about whom less biographical information is known. This shows in the discussion of medieval and Renaissance composers whose music is treated at

greater length than is usual in encyclopedias. Thus the article on Landini (six pages, including work-list) discusses all the known evidence about his life, links it to an

attempt at chronology of the works and concludes with a succinct but clear account of his style. Dufay (eleven pages, including work-list) receives an even more

thorough treatment, and the article on Dunstable (five pages, including work-list) equally sums up the present state of knowledge. Obrecht is granted nine pages, which are largely taken up by a thorough discussion of style; the work-list is valuable for its remarks on each composition. Ockeghem is accorded a similar treatment. The encouraging feature of all these entries is that they rarely obscure the basic issues of style and chronology by over-concentration on problems about sources or interpretation and therefore should make their subjects accessible to a wider range of reader than did earlier encyclopedias.

The light cast on lesser figures is brighter still. Until recently, information about them has relied strongly on the evidence of title-pages, which provided the basic material of Eitner's invaluable Quellen-Lexikon, now 80 years old. A great deal of research, however, has now been done both in archives and on sources, and the number of theses on such figures, too, means that problems concerning their work- lists can be resolved and details of appointments to churches or courts given. An excellent example is afforded by the article on the Bononcini family, information about whom has hitherto been in a hopeless muddle; the outlines of their careers and works in The New Grove sort out many of the difficulties.

In the tradition of previous editions of Grove, present-day performers are accorded a great deal of space. This is open to two criticisms. Firstly, many of them are not distinguished enough to merit inclusion in a work of reference that is

planned to last (it is too much to expect that libraries or individuals will be able to afford revised editions in the near future). The second, more serious objection is that these performers are subjected to critical remarks that may reflect their standing at

present but must inevitably be out-of-date very quickly, perhaps even misleading in another decade. Neither objection can be levelled against the treatment of the great performers of the past, especially the informative entries on such 18th-century singers and violinists as Faustina Bordoni, Senesino, Castrucci and Dubourg who, not being composers of any distinction, have been neglected both in histories and reference books. Much of this information was scattered in local histories of cities and opera houses; putting it together is surely one of the functions of an

encyclopedia and results in opening new vistas about the diffusion of style (as a round table at the conference on Vivaldi held in Venice at the Fondazione Cini in

September 1981 showed). That the large articles on philosophical subjects such as Analysis, Education and

Psychology should show a greater diversity of approach is not unexpected. The

polemical attitude found in a number of articles in Grove 5 is seen in the article Criticism, which is largely a revision of that from the earlier edition, expanded in an



D. Arnold: The New Grove 5

outspoken section entitled 'Recent trends.' A more objective approach is to be found in Analysis, which is largely an exposition of differing approaches to the subject. Education concentrates on the history of music teaching, with a relatively brief section on 'conceptual aspects.' The article on Psychology is difficult for the non- specialist and suffers from the lack of a clear approach; strangely, there is no separate entry on 'Philosophy of Music' (although individual thinkers are not neglected, and cross-indexing would have done much to repair the lacuna). The articles dealing with acoustical phenomena are, on the other hand, ample, and the present interest in the history of science is reflected in the welcome entry Physics of Music, which is largely a survey of scientific investigations from the 17th century on.

Articles on genres and forms are often composite ones. Symphony (30 pages) is by three authors, as is Sonata (20 pages), though it is obviously dominated by one of them; and Opera (102 pages, including a large number of pictorial illustrations) is the work of no fewer than 19 contributors. This last article breaks new ground by treating the genre not mainly as a purely musical form but also as a union of different arts, devoting more than token space to the libretto and to scenic design. Although this means going over the same historical material at least twice to some extent, it is nonetheless a valuable and valid approach. Smaller genres can be dealt with by single authors; notable examples are the articles Oratorio (22 pages) and Suite (18 pages), which contain less detail than the composite entries but benefit by a unified treatment and clear historical exposition based on up-to-date research. Form itself is accorded only a short entry, supplemented by comprehensive explanations of individual forms, usually with a substantial example analysed to expound the terminology in normal use. Thus in Sonata form the first movement of Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik K. 525 is given a conventional bar-by-bar analysis to which a discussion of the historical development of the form is related. This may be felt not to take into account the view that such forms can no longer be considered moulds into which material is poured; it is nonetheless an essential for the lay reader, and there are sufficient caveats to warn the historically minded student that this account cannot pretend to be more than an outline.

The range of instruments treated has expanded in recent years with the scientific investigation of the nature of 'historical' instruments. The ample entries for the major families of instruments usually include a historical survey of the instruments' development, a description of how they work, and a briefer account of the technique of playing them. This latter is supplemented by the article Performing practice and by a separate discussion of fingering, the more valuable because it treats it historically rather than assuming a purely present-day standpoint. A similar approach is adopted in the extensive article on ornamentation; this has a comprehensive table of signs, which, although at times difficult to relate exactly to the information in the article, gives a good guide to original source material. Orchestration and Orchestra, taken together, are a miniature history rather than a survey of potential means and effects.

Bibliographical subjects are given much space. The article Libraries is virtually a




handbook of 100 pages which, after a brief introduction concerning the growth of musical collections, lists all the most important and many minor libraries, with a

summary of their holdings. Periodicals treats its subject on an even grander scale, its 128 pages including an alphabetical index. 'History of music' is an exception in not receiving a separate entry, although there is a generalized survey in Historiogra- phy, and the subject is also discussed in the article on musicology. Over 150 pages on sources highlight the musicological orientation of The New Grove in being devoted to music written before 1700. The introductory matter, on the methods of

writing manuscript music and to the individual sections on the different types of source, raises interesting issues, but the actual listing of the sources seems really to

belong to individual entries on plainsong, lute music and so on, and the selection of

topics is somewhat arbitrary. The New Grove reflects the present state of musicology both in the comprehen-

siveness of its information and in its implied attitudes towards that information. If the slight bias towards the earlier centuries of Western music and towards music outside that tradition has meant some curtailment in the treatment of 19th-century music (the work-lists of minor 19th-century composers are, for example, less

thorough than those of medieval and Renaissance composers), little of any importance is lacking. One regret must be that the work-lists do not cite modern editions of early music with the thoroughness for which at least the earlier volumes of MGG were remarkable; but one advantage of these lists is that they skilfully use RISM sigla to itemize works and make it easy to locate those in manuscript sources.

Similarly, the existence of RISM has given the opportunity to clarify the lists of works originally published in anthologies. The contents of smaller libraries hitherto unknown come to light.

The very amount of information contained in The New Grove highlights the

fragmentation of knowledge that presents one of the main problems of current

musicology. The more limited aspects, such as biographies, the smaller genres and technical scientific matters, which can come under the purview of a single expert, offer fuller and more accurate information than previously. The multi-contributor

articles, on the other hand, tend to lack a consistent approach, although the copy- editing has usually produced a reasonably uniform prose style. There are no

equivalents of Blume's magisterial articles in MGG, probably because it is no longer possible for one man to master sufficient of the available material. It can in any case be held that an encyclopedia is the place for a more neutral attitude, a view that could be accepted for The New Grove, if it did not show signs of distinctive views

concerning the writing of music history (incipient Darwinian and Marxist views are

expressed). Nevertheless, at the position that has now been reached The New Grove

sets a standard in the provision of information that makes it the most important reference tool of its time.



the new grove

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