The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an
encyclopedic dictionaryAn encyclopedic dictionary typically includes a large number of short listings, arranged alphabetically, and discussing a wide range of topics. Encyclopedic dictionaries can be general, containing articles on topics in many different fields; or they can specialize in a particular field...
of music and musicians. Along with the German-language
Musik in Geschichte und GegenwartDie Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart is the largest and most comprehensive German music encyclopedia, and among Western music reference sources, only the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is comparable to it in size and scope...
, it is the largest single reference work on Western music. The dictionary has gone through several editions since the 19th century and is widely used. In recent years it has been made available as an electronic resource.
A Dictionary of Music and Musicians
It was first published as
A Dictionary of Music and Musicians in four volumes (1878, 1880, 1883, 1890) edited by Sir
George GroveSir George Grove, CB was an English writer on music, known as the founding editor of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians....
with an Appendix edited by
J. A. Fuller MaitlandJohn Alexander Fuller Maitland was an influential British music critic and scholar from the 1880s to the 1920s. He encouraged the rediscovery of English music of the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly Henry Purcell's music and English virginal music...
and an Index edited by Mrs. Edmund Wodehouse. It was reprinted in 1890 and 1900.
Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians
The second edition (
Grove II), in five volumes, was edited by Fuller Maitland and published from 1904 to 1910, this time as
Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
The third edition (
Grove III), also in five volumes, was an extensive revision of the 2nd edition; it was edited by H. C. Colles and published in 1927.
The fourth edition (
Grove IV), also edited by Colles, was published in 1940 in five volumes (a reprint of the third edition, with some corrections) plus a Supplementary Volume (making six volumes in all).
The fifth edition (
Grove V), in nine volumes, was edited by
Eric BlomEric Walter Blom CBE was a Swiss-born British-naturalised music lexicographer, musicologist, music critic, music biographer and translator. He is best known as the editor of the 5th edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians .-Biography:Blom was born in Berne, Switzerland...
and published in 1954. This was the most thoroughgoing revision of the work since its inception, with many articles rewritten in a more modern style and a large number of entirely new articles. Many of the articles were written by Blom personally, or translated by him. An additional Supplementary Volume, prepared for the most part by Eric Blom, followed in 1961. Blom died in 1959, and the Supplementary Volume was completed by
Denis StevensDenis William Stevens CBE was a British musicologist specialising in early music, conductor, professor of music and radio producer....
. The fifth edition was reprinted in 1966.
The New Grove, first edition
When the next edition appeared in 1980, it was under the new name
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and was greatly expanded to 20 volumes with 22,500 articles and 16,500 biographies. Its senior editor was
Stanley SadieStanley Sadie CBE was a leading British musicologist, music critic, and editor. He was editor of the sixth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , which was published as the first edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.Sadie was educated at St Paul's School,...
with
Nigel FortuneNigel Cameron Fortune was an English musicologist and political activist. Along with Thurston Dart, Oliver Neighbour, and Stanley Sadie he was one of Britain's leading musicologists of the post-World War II generation...
also serving as one of the main editors for the publication.
It was reprinted with minor corrections each subsequent year until 1995, except 1982 and 1983. In the mid-90s, the set version sold for about $2,300. A paperback edition was reprinted in 1995 which sold for $500. At that point, editors likely decided to concentrate on the second edition rather than continue to correct the mistakes of the original 1980 edition.
- ISBN 0-333-23111-2 – hardback
- ISBN 1-56159-174-2 – paperback
- ISBN 0-333-73250-2 – British special edition
- ISBN 1-56159-229-3 – American special edition
Spin-offs
Some sections of
The New Grove were also issued as individual books on particular topics.
The New Grove, second edition
The second edition under this title (the seventh overall) was published in 2001, in 29 volumes. It was also made available by subscription on the internet in a service called Grove Music Online. It was again edited by
Stanley SadieStanley Sadie CBE was a leading British musicologist, music critic, and editor. He was editor of the sixth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , which was published as the first edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.Sadie was educated at St Paul's School,...
, and the executive editor was John Tyrrell. It was originally to be released on CD-ROM as well, but this plan was dropped. As Sadie writes in the preface, "The biggest single expansion in the present edition has been in the coverage of 20th-century composers".
This edition has been subject to some negative criticism (e.g. in
Private EyePrivate Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop.Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency,...
) owing to the significant number of typographical and factual errors that it contains. Some of the errors were attributed to the use of students for checking the dictionary, although in fact no students were ever employed as editorial staff. Two volumes were re-issued in corrected versions, however, after production errors originally caused the omission of sections of
Igor StravinskyIgor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
's worklist and
Richard WagnerWilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's bibliography.
Ian BentIan Bent is Professor Emeritus, after retiring from Full Professor of Music, at Columbia University and Honorary Professor in the History of Music Theory at the University of Cambridge. He is the editor of the Cambridge Studies in Music Theory and Analysis series and an area for second edition of...
was a Senior Consulting Editor from 1971 to 1980.
- ISBN 0-333-60800-3 – British
- ISBN 1-56159-239-0 – American (cloth: alk.paper)
Grove Music Online
Publication of the second edition of
The New Grove was accompanied by a web-based version. It attracted some initial criticism, for example for the way in which images were not incorporated into the text but kept separate.
The online version was regularly updated, including a large number of revisions and additions of new articles. As well as the 29 volumes of
The New Grove second edition, Grove Music Online incorporated the four-volume
New Grove Dictionary of OperaThe New Grove Dictionary of Opera is an encyclopedia of opera, considered to be one of the best general reference sources on the subject. It is the largest work on opera in English, and in its printed form, amounts to 5,448 pages in four volumes....
(ed.
Stanley SadieStanley Sadie CBE was a leading British musicologist, music critic, and editor. He was editor of the sixth edition of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , which was published as the first edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.Sadie was educated at St Paul's School,...
, 1992) and the three-volume
New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, second edition (ed. Barry Kernfeld, 2002), comprising a total of more than 50,000 articles.
As well as being available to individual and educational subscribers, it was available for use by members of many libraries worldwide.
In 2008, Grove Music Online was replaced by Oxford Music Online.
Oxford Music Online
In March 2008,
Oxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
launched a new online service called Oxford Music Online, replacing Grove Music Online. The new service is designed to provide a "gateway that offers users the ability, for the first time ever, to access and cross-search the vast resources of Oxford's music reference in one location." In addition to providing a new interface, the new service brings the Grove encyclopedias together with the Oxford Companion to Music, the Oxford Dictionary of Music, and the Encyclopedia of Popular Music. OUP plans to continue pursuing the addition of other reference works to the service.
The Grove Dictionary component of Oxford Music Online continues to be updated much as Grove Music Online was.
Status
The New Grove is often the first source that English-speaking
musicologistsMusicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
use when beginning research or seeking information on most musical topics. Its scope and extensive bibliographies make it exceedingly valuable to any scholar with a grasp of the English language.
Its principal competitor is the
Musik in Geschichte und GegenwartDie Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart is the largest and most comprehensive German music encyclopedia, and among Western music reference sources, only the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is comparable to it in size and scope...
("MGG"), currently ten volumes on musical subjects and seventeen on biographies of musicians, written in German.
The dictionary was originally published by
MacmillanMacmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...
but was sold in 2004 to
Oxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
.
The print edition the
New Grove costs between $1100 and $1500, while an annual subscription to Grove Music Online is $295.
The companion four-volume series,
New Grove Dictionary of OperaThe New Grove Dictionary of Opera is an encyclopedia of opera, considered to be one of the best general reference sources on the subject. It is the largest work on opera in English, and in its printed form, amounts to 5,448 pages in four volumes....
, is the main reference work in English on the subject of opera.
Contents
The 2001 edition contains:
- 29,499 articles in total
- 5,623 entirely new articles
- 20,374 biographies of composers, performers and writers on music
- 96 articles on theatre directors
- 1,465 articles on styles, terms and genres
- 805 articles on regions, countries and cities
- 580 articles on ancient music and church music
- 1,327 articles on world musics
- 1,221 articles on popular music, light music, and jazz
- 2,261 articles on instruments and their makers, and performance practice
- 693 articles on printing and publishing
- 174 articles on notation
- 131 articles on sources
Humour
Two non-existent composers have appeared in the work:
Dag Henrik Esrum-Hellerup was the subject of a hoax entry in the 1980
New Grove. Esrum-Hellerup's surname derives from a Danish village and a suburb of Copenhagen. The writer of the entry was Robert Layton. Though successfully introduced into the encyclopaedia, Esrum-Hellerup appeared in the first printing only: soon exposed as a hoax, the entry was removed and the space filled with an illustration. In 1983, the Danish organist Henry Palsmar founded an amateur choir, the Esrum-Hellerup Choir, along with several former pupils of the Song School, St. Annae Gymnasium in Copenhagen.
Guglielmo Baldini was the name of a non-existent composer who was the subject of a hoax entry in the 1980 edition. Unlike Esrum-Hellerup, Baldini was not a modern creation: his name and biography were in fact created almost a century earlier by the renowned German musicologist
Hugo RiemannKarl Wilhelm Julius Hugo Riemann was a German music theorist.-Biography:Riemann was born at Grossmehlra, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen. He was educated in theory by Frankenberger, studied the piano with Barthel and Ratzenberger, studied law, and finally philosophy and history at Berlin and Tübingen...
. The
New Grove entry on Baldini was supported by a fictional reference in the form of an article supposedly in the
Archiv fur Freiburger Diozesan geschichte. Though successfully introduced into the encyclopaedia, Baldini appeared in the first printing only: soon exposed as a hoax, the entry was removed.
Seven
parodyA parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
entries, written by contributors to the 1980 edition, and full of musical puns and dictionary
in-jokeAn in-joke, also known as an inside joke or in joke, is a joke whose humour is clear only to people who are in a particular social group, occupation, or other community of common understanding...
s, were published in the February 1981 issue of
The Musical TimesThe Musical Times is an academic journal of classical music edited and produced in the United Kingdom. It is currently the oldest such journal that is still publishing in the UK, having been published continuously since 1844. It was published as The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular until...
(which was also edited by Stanley Sadie at the time). These entries never appeared in the dictionary itself and are:
- Brown, 'Mother' (Mary) (b 1550; d Wapping 3 Jan 1611)
- Ear-flute
- Hameln [Hamelin]
- Khan't, Genghis
Genghis Khan , born Temujin and occasionally known by his temple name Taizu , was the founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death....
(Tamburlaine) (b Ulan Bator, c1880; d New York, 22 Nov 1980)
- Stainglit (Nevers), Sait d'Ail (fl
Floruit , abbreviated fl. , is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something was active...
Middle Ages) – i.e. 'Stanley Sadie', following the example of Luis van RootenLuis van Rooten, was an American film actor. He was christened Luis d'Antin van Rooten.Van Rooten earned his BA at the University of Pennsylvania and worked as an architect before deciding to pursue film work in Hollywood during World War II...
- Toblerone
Toblerone is a chocolate bar brand owned by Kraft Foods, who acquired the product from former owner Jacobs Suchard in 1990. It is well-known for its distinctive packaging, its prism shape and its ubiquity in duty-free shops.The triangular shape of the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps is commonly...
- Verdi, Lasagne ['Il Bolognese'] (b Bologna, 10 Oct 1813; d Naples, 15 March 1867)
External links
- Worldcat listings for Grove Dictionaries
- 'About the New Grove Dictionary', San Francisco Symphony Orchestra
- 'Grove Music Online', Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
Libraries
- 'Grove sees trees but not forest', Greg Sandow
Greg Sandow is an American music critic and composer. He is a graduate of Harvard University, with a bachelor's degree in government, and of Yale University, with a master's degree in composition....
and Anne MidgetteAnne Midgette is an American journalist and classical music critic. Her father was the painter Willard Midgette.Midgette is a 1986 graduate of Yale University. After university, she lived for 11 years in Munich, Germany, reviewing opera, music and art throughout Europe for The Wall Street...
, The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
, July 3, 2001
- 'You could look it up: The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians' (Review), *Benjamin Ivry
Benjamin Ivry is an American writer on the arts, broadcaster and translator.Ivry is author of biographies of Francis Poulenc, Arthur Rimbaud, and Maurice Ravel, as well as a poetry collection, Paradise for the Portuguese Queen...
, Commonweal, March 9, 2001
- Allen P. Britton, 'Review: The New Grove Dictionary of American Music', American Music, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer, 1987), pp. 194–203 at JSTOR
JSTOR is an online system for archiving academic journals, founded in 1995. It provides its member institutions full-text searches of digitized back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society...
- Phillip D. Crabtree, Donald H. Foster, 1993, Sourcebook for Research in Music, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ISBN 0253213231 at Google Books
- Interview with Stanley Sadie, by Bruce Duffie October 29, 1992 (1904 edition, 1920 supplement)