This is the big one -- 20 thick volumes packed full of information on musical history, composers, artists and more. It carries a big price tag, but it's an invaluable aid for the serious student or writer. Grove has several other dictionaries, opera and jazz among them, but if you can only handle one, this is the one to get. This text refers to the 20 Volume edition of this title.

From Library Journal
Now appearing in print and online simultaneously, this expanded second edition of the most substantial, comprehensive music encyclopedia in English deserves applause for including greater coverage of world and popular music, nearly 2000 more articles on 20th-century composers, and more than 29,000 entries (many rewritten or revised) by over 6000 contributors nearly 7000 more entries by 3600 more contributors than graced the 20-volume 1980 edition. New articles on intellectual trends (e.g., deconstruction, modernism, and postmodernism), sociopolitical movements (e.g., feminism, Marxism, and Nazism), and even animal music and sex illuminate music's various contexts far better than did the earlier New Grove's. One brave entry's topic is music itself. There are some problems, however: leaden prose in some of the theoretical and subject articles infused with theory (such as the long rewrite of popular music), questionable choices and/or poor reproductions of photographs (e.g., a foolish pose of Bing Crosby and far too darkly reproduced field-study photos), a disappointing failure to update bibliographies in many articles, and absent or scanty lists of recordings in entries for popular and jazz musicians. Some signs that this set was rushed into print include pages missing from the Stravinsky article and scattered typographical errors or incorrect facts. The publisher, however, has promised buyers new copies of the Stravinsky article and claims that future reprints will correct these mistakes. By contrast, the online version (see review, Database&Disc Reviews, p. 114-19) will be updated quarterly and selectively revised annually, so the two media will soon have markedly different content. Still, even those libraries subscribing to the virtual version need the print version, which, like its predecessor, will be useful for decades to come. Only the print version is fully illustrated, and the musical examples are best viewed on the printed page, for only there can users see longer examples in their entirety while reading the accompanying narrative. An appendix of articles listing libraries, editions, periodicals, and the like is not yet online; nor are the introductory usage notes from Volume 1. Finally, information from the welcome index volume the first since 1890 is incompletely reproduced online. This time around, the volumes are taller and thinner, with wide margins that allow for rebinding and sewn bindings that should withstand heavy use. Some owners have noticed that the inner margins are rippled, causing crackling noises when pages are turned, but the publisher claims that the bindings will relax over time. Libraries that relied on the first New Grove should welcome its superior print successor. [Special discounts are available for libraries purchasing the print and online versions together. Ed.] Bonnie Jo Dopp, Univ. of Maryland Libs., College Par.- Bonnie Jo Dopp, Univ. of Maryland Libs., College Park Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
*Starred Review*The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition (New Grove II), is a monumental work of 29 volumes. It is the largest single-subject encyclopedia in the world and the definitive music reference source.Sir George Grove (1820-1900), who could be called a Renaissance man, was a civil engineer who also built bridges, railways stations, and lighthouses in Bermuda and Jamaica. He began writing and editing the first Grove in the 1870s. That four-volume set was published in four different years, 1878, 1880, 1883, and 1890. Subsequent editions were edited by others, but the Grove name has remained. The second edition, in five volumes, was published from 1904 to 1910. The third edition, also in five volumes, appeared in 1927. The next year saw a one-volume American supplement containing some new material. A five-volume fourth edition was published in 1940. The nine volumes of the fifth edition appeared in 1954, followed by a supplementary volume in 1961. Stanley Sadie edited New Grove, published in 1980, and he is the editor of New Grove II. In the world of Grove these two new editions are called Grove 6 and Grove 7. New Grove II (or Grove 7), complete with an online version, continues a long and impressive history.The numbers for New Grove II are impressive, though there are slight variations in different brochures and press releases supplied by the publisher. The statistics begin with the number of words (25 million) and continue: 29,000 signed articles written by 5,700 contributors from 98 countries. The articles include 20,000 biographies; 2,200 entries for instruments and their makers; 1,400 entries on styles, terms, and genres; 1,300 entries on world music; 1,200 entries on popular music; plus entries on other topics, such as acoustics (89 articles). Each of the first 27 volumes includes several lists of abbreviations-- general, bibliographical, discographical, and library sigla (abbreviations for libraries holfing music-related manuscripts)--as well as instructions on using the dictionary. The introduction in volume 1 explains alphabetization, usage, article structure, bibliographies, and work lists. The first volume also includes the preface of the first edition, written by George Grove, and the prefaces to New Grove and New Grove II, both written by Sadie. Sadie reminds the reader that each edition meets the needs of its own generation and earlier editions retain usefulness. As in New Grove, the editor encourages users to send corrections, but now if corrections are sent by e-mail, the mistakes will be quickly rectified in the online version.A whole article could be written on volumes 28 and 29. Volume 28 is a collection of fascinating material. The first section is an annotated list of private collections of music memorabilia. Based on an article by Otto Albrecht in New Grove, it has been revised, so the 1988 death of Reginald Allen, a collector of Gilbert and Sullivan letters, is included, as is a 1989 book about the collection at the Pierpoint Morgan Library. Another section lists reports of musical congresses from 1860 to 1998. A chronological list and index of "Dictionaries and Encyclopedias of Music" includes The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (1992), but this is difficult to find because of an incorrect entry number under opera in the index.Another section is an annotated list of libraries describing their musical holdings. In the extensive list and index of periodicals, titles are arranged by region and then country, with bibliographical information. "Sound Archives" describes in detail collections such as the Rogers and Hammerstein Archives of the New York Public Library. The final section is the list of contributors.Volume 29 contains the index, "the first attempt to index Grove since 1890." The index is thematic, based on the subjective judgment of the compiler. All article titles are included with numerous subheadings. Thus, under the entry for Venice there are subheadings for ballet; clavichord makers; Lotti, Antonio; and opera, among others. The subheadings under Bach are numerous--more than three columns. The index is useful for browsing, though the compiler reminds the reader that to find every instance of a name, the perfect resource is a full-text search of the online edition. The index volume also contains separate lists of composers, arranged by date and nationality, as well as women composers, conductors, harpsichordists, organists, pianists, and violinists, all arranged by date. Lists of singers are organized by date and also by voice. The final list is on writers, again arranged by date and then category--librettos, lyrics, and plays; and history, theory, and practice.Size is certainly the greatest difference from earlier editions. It has been 20 years since New Grove was published, and nine volumes and nine million words have been added. Classical music scholarship may not have increased 50 percent in 20 years, but what scholars have to say about music apparently has! New Grove II has additional entries on jazz, rock and popular music, twentieth-century composers, and world music, with new articles on the traditional music of specific countries. Another area of increase is in what the editors call "postmodern penumbra." These include topics related to music and gender, music and Nazism, Animal Music, the psychology of music, and more.The major change in New Grove II is the addition of many more entries on popular music. Previously Grove was considered primarily a dictionary of classical music. Now, near the article about medieval Franco-Flemish theorist Jacobus of Liege is an entry on, with picture of, Michael Jackson. The entry for John Lennon is very concise, considering his wide musical influence in the late twentieth century. The article for the Beatles is more extensive, with a work-list of their recorded songs. Although the Animals, David Bowie, hip hop, Madonna, the New York Dolls, and Linda Ronstadt all have entries, coverage of popular music occupies only about one percent of the total text, and, obviously, many popular musicians are not included.In his preface, Sadie describes the methods used to revise the content. Articles were divided into three categories: entries sent to contributors for minor revisions, those sent for specific revisions, and articles rewritten or replaced. An example of a replaced article is that on Tchaikovsky, which now says the cause of his death is unknown (his entry in New Grove said he died by his own hand). A few composers of the Baroque and Renaissance have been eliminated, while those of the nineteenth and twentieth century have increased (from 3,000 to 5,000 for the twentieth century). This may be a very good reason for libraries to retain previous editions. Other new articles are about the countries of the former Soviet Union, where scholars are now freer to write.The coverage of African countries is amazing. Only eight African countries do not have separate articles; five of them are islands, and the other three--Burundi, Eritrea, and Namibia-- are newly independent or have had major problems. The photographs and maps accompanying many of the country articles do much to enhance the text. The article Tanzania includes a map, four pictures, and sections on the history, the musical styles of particular geographic areas, and recent developments. The bibliography is more than a column in length and includes two recordings. Lesotho concentrates on instruments, songs, and dances, with two photographs of a lesiba (zither).Two new entries, Music and Spoof articles, were added because of comments following the publication of New Grove. Music, written by the ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl, is 12 pages long. It includes sections on the etymology of the term music and the concept of music in cultures and in scholarship. In the first printing of New Grove there were two spurious entries (Esrum-Herrerup, Dag Henrik and Baldini, Guglielmo), which Sadie thought necessitated an entry on spoofs. The new article Sex, sexuality mentions the erotic interests of two composers, Nicolas Gombert and Benjamin Britten, four centuries apart--a topic that was never discussed in previous editions.It has been said that it is impossible to fairly evaluate such a monumental work. There will always be mistakes. A Canadian critic discovered that Gilles Tremblay's biography includes works listed through 1996, but his death date is listed as 1982. (He is still alive!) In the Library Sigla list the College of William and Mary library is called Swenn instead of Swem. Transliteration may be a puzzle in entries that include foreign names. New Grove Rakhmaninov becomes Rachmaninoff in New Grove II, but Skryabin (Scriabin) remains Skryabin. With more than 5,000 contributors, it is understandable that there wasn't space in New Grove II to list their affiliations or what topics they authored. New Grove II Online offers the capability to search by contributor, so it is easier to discover that Harold Shonberg wrote the article on Horowitz, and that Christopher Hogwood contributed entries on Giordani, Hague, and Randall.It was the publisher that discovered two major mistakes--part of the work-list for the Stravinsky article was omitted and the bibliography for the Richard Wagner article was not updated from the New Grove (although, strangely, the bibliography does list one title published in 1994). The publisher promises that replacement volumes will be available in June 2001 to rectify these particular errors.Browsing through random volumes of New Grove II illustrates the breadth and depth of information that it contains: 60 pages on the analysis of music in volume 1; an article on blues progression with examples of harmonic structure in volume 2; more than 30 pages on Benjamin Britten in volume 4; 116 pages on notation in volume 18; articles on Tajikistan, tar (a plucked lute), conductor Yuri Temirkanov, and The Twelve Apostles, an influential group of eighteenth-century keyboard instrument makers, in volume 25. For almost 120 years the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians has been used and relied upon by writers, students, and anyone with an interest in music. The "intelligent inquirer" (Grove's words) continues to use this resource as a reference for any question relating to music. Certainly $4,850 is a substantial investment for many libraries, but a work of this magnitude does not come along everyday.The editors describe New Grove II Online as being in its infancy. As of March 2001 it contains the complete text and musical score segments of its print counterpart, along with some of the pictures, and links to additional images as well as to sounds and related Web sites. Plans for the future include the online version of volumes 28 and 29 (appendixes and index), quarterly updates, an annual review, and periodic area reviews. In terms of multimedia, New Grove II Online includes 141 images, primarily of musical instruments. There are a few images of musicians--J. S. Bach, Bill Haley, and Jimi Hendrix. What an odd mix! The sound files are an equally bizarre assortment. Most of the current 79 files are of musical instruments, but there are also clips of Mozart operas, Jefferson Airplane, and Merle Haggard.A navigation bar appearing at the top of each page has an Article Search form as well as buttons for Home, Search, Browse, Explore, and Help. Browse lists entry headings from A to Z. The Explore feature, still under development, arranges entries by categories, such as cellists and women composers. On the Search page are options for full-text and four specialized searches: Bibliographies, Biographies, Contributors, and Links. A Work-list search is promised in the near future. (Work-lists, bibliographies, and contributors can also be accessed via a full-text search.) Bibliographies can be searched by keywords, article title, city and date of publication, or topic. Biographies may be searched by keywords, birth date, death date, place of birth and death, occupation, and nationality. The Links search enables a user to discover a list of all links, whether images, sound, organizations, literature, or general.Article search will search only article headings. Full-text search results depend on the search mode that is selected. A Concept search incorporates a thesaurus and matches words that are synonymous. A Pattern search looks for words similar in spelling to those that are entered (e.g., center, centre). The third option is a Boolean search. The user may also choose to have search terms highlighted, to have search results explained, and to conduct an Expert search, which allows one to select or exclude variations in meaning or spelling of the search terms. Search results are ranked based on the number of times a word appears in an article.Within an article, a navigation bar at the bottom of the page allows the user to go back, forward, or return to the search results. There are buttons for illustrations, sounds, and Web links, as well as for a list of related articles. Different colors are used to indicate which buttons are active and in use, but the colors are hard to differentiate. Article contents are outlined on the left of the screen, useful in choosing what section the user would like to read. There is no "printer friendly" button, though Help offers useful tips, and printed pages look clean. Help does not offer guidelines about citing New Grove II Online. Currently articles cannot be downloaded or e-mailed.The various search options lead to results that would be much more time-consuming, if not impossible, to obtain from the print set. A full-text search for the currently popular singer Eminem reveals that he is mentioned in an article on Seattle. A search for the song "Brighten a Corner Where You Are" produces a description of the song and a link to the article Gospel music, which contains both the music and the words. A search for Steinway AND gliders leads to both the Steinway article and an article on the piano, where it is mentioned that during World War II, Steinway factories produced gliders. In Biography search a user may discover that Arthur Fiedler was one of 10 biographees that were born and died in Boston. A Biography search by occupation and nationality will produce two Latvian tenors. A Bibliography search by author and topic will find two entries by T. Dox about oratorios. There are 27 articles in New Grove II written originally by George Grove, including couac ("a sudden horrible noise to which a clarinet is liable when the reed is out of order and the wind not quite under control").Another online feature that is an improvement over the print volumes is the abbreviations box, which allows a search for an abbreviation appearing in the text. In some ways, however, the print set is still easier to use. Editor Sadie has commented that scrolling through an article is not the same as seeing a complete page of the print volume, and this is particularly true for work lists. For example, the user looking at the table of Mozart's masses will need to keep returning to the top of the page to see what the column headings are.The trumpet article is a good example of what New Grove II Online does well. In addition to the article, there are links to images in the Grove database, to sounds on the Web, to related articles, and to other Web sites. One of the sound links is 43 seconds of unidentified trumpet music; another is three Real Audio files available from the Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Musical Instruments. Some of the Web links provide additional sound. This article also contains one of the five 3-D images contained in New Grove II Online. The other four are of a guitar, a saxophone, a timpani, and a violin. These images rotate and show the parts and features of each instrument.Trumpet also illustrates what should and perhaps will be improved. The online article has only three illustrations out of the twenty-one in the print edition. One or two of the links to information on the Web were not available; it is assumed that the publisher will continually check and replace dead links. Country articles also suffer from lack of illustrations. The Japan entry has none of the 24 photographs from the print edition and no links to Internet sites. At this point the lack of images is a major disappointment. However, the publisher says that the April update will add about 4,000 images, with others added with each quarterly update. It is estimated that eventually 75 percent of the images from New Grove II will be online. This figure combined with online links and other resources means that ultimately New Grove II Online will have many more images than the print version. For a subject resource that is primarily related to an auditory experience, the paucity of sound is also a definite lack. The 79 sound files are, for the most part, no more than a minute of music each. Presumably the publisher will continue to add additional and longer sound files.Grove's certainly should be commended for producing this online resource. It was and continues to be a huge undertaking. Changes have already been made based on user comments, and changes for the better no doubt will continue. One recent example recommended by librarians is a log-off button. As of the writing of this review (March 31), the first update had not appeared, but the promises of factual and bibliographical updates and new links are exciting. Plans for 2001 include the adding of the online versions of The New Grove Dictionary of Opera and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz. The annual updates that will focus on a topic such as popular music traditions (2002) and women in music (2003) are a new concept that should prove to be useful.In a speech to the Music Library Association meeting in February 2000, Sadie said, "The electronic future of the enterprise offers exciting and challenging possibilities and I hope that the prime musical reference work of the English-speaking world will have as long and distinguished a future as it has a past." Despite a few rough spots in its early stages, New Grove II Online is a very promising continuation of the Grove tradition. As for the book version, it has been reported that it cost $33 million to produce New Grove II (before the replacement volumes were planned). With this expenditure and the debut of the online edition, New Grove II may be the last print Grove. But whatever its form, this is a musical source for all people and all times. RBB
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

ANNOTATION

A completely new version of a work first published in the late 19th century, this 20-volume set is the culmination of more than 12 years of work by 2,400 scholars. Packed with information on the history and development of music, composers, performers, instruments, musical forms, terms and definitions, and musical cites and institutions, the set covers every type of music, from classical to popular to jazz. Over 4,000 illustrations.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Since its publication in 1980 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians continues to be the undisputed leader in its field. This special edition of "... the greatest musical dictionary ever published ... a magnificent achievement" (The New York Review of Books), combines the convenient size and affordability of paperback Grove with the lasting durability of a hardcover. The Washington Post calls this "... one of the major publishing events of our time ... it sets spectacular new standards in its field ... (and) is, in sum, a landmark, a dazzling achievement". By far the most exhaustive work on the history of music, The New Grove is the ultimate music source for both music professionals and amateurs. With 20 volumes and over 18,000 pages, this is the last and most definitive word in music reference. The set includes cross-reference composer worklists, over 3,000 musical examples, family histories, important musical cities, and performing societies.

FROM THE CRITICS

Joseph McLellan

One of the major publishing events of our time. . . It sets spectacular new standards in its field. . . It is, in sum, a landmark, a dazzling achievement. -- Washington Post

Library Journal

Now appearing in print and online simultaneously, this expanded second edition of the most substantial, comprehensive music encyclopedia in English deserves applause for including greater coverage of world and popular music, nearly 2000 more articles on 20th-century composers, and more than 29,000 entries (many rewritten or revised) by over 6000 contributors nearly 7000 more entries by 3600 more contributors than graced the 20-volume 1980 edition. New articles on intellectual trends (e.g., deconstruction, modernism, and postmodernism), sociopolitical movements (e.g., feminism, Marxism, and Nazism), and even animal music and sex illuminate music's various contexts far better than did the earlier New Grove's. One brave entry's topic is music itself. There are some problems, however: leaden prose in some of the theoretical and subject articles infused with theory (such as the long rewrite of popular music), questionable choices and/or poor reproductions of photographs (e.g., a foolish pose of Bing Crosby and far too darkly reproduced field-study photos), a disappointing failure to update bibliographies in many articles, and absent or scanty lists of recordings in entries for popular and jazz musicians. Some signs that this set was rushed into print include pages missing from the Stravinsky article and scattered typographical errors or incorrect facts. The publisher, however, has promised buyers new copies of the Stravinsky article and claims that future reprints will correct these mistakes. By contrast, the online version (see review, Database&Disc Reviews, p. 114-19) will be updated quarterly and selectively revised annually, so the two media will soon have markedly different content. Still, even those libraries subscribing to the virtual version need the print version, which, like its predecessor, will be useful for decades to come. Only the print version is fully illustrated, and the musical examples are best viewed on the printed page, for only there can users see longer examples in their entirety while reading the accompanying narrative. An appendix of articles listing libraries, editions, periodicals, and the like is not yet online; nor are the introductory usage notes from Volume 1. Finally, information from the welcome index volume the first since 1890 is incompletely reproduced online. This time around, the volumes are taller and thinner, with wide margins that allow for rebinding and sewn bindings that should withstand heavy use. Some owners have noticed that the inner margins are rippled, causing crackling noises when pages are turned, but the publisher claims that the bindings will relax over time. Libraries that relied on the first New Grove should welcome its superior print successor. [Special discounts are available for libraries purchasing the print and online versions together. Ed.] Bonnie Jo Dopp, Univ. of Maryland Libs., College Park Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Charles Rosen

The greatest musical dictionary every published. -- Charles Rosen, The New York Review of Books

Harold C. Schonberg