Shorter Notices
TWENTY-SEVEN years elapsed 'between the second and third editions of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Now after a space of half that time Dr. Cones has brought his edition up to date. To this end he has corrected and revised the five volumes published in 1927, filling in details without disturbing the pagination, and has added to them a supplementary volume containing additions to the articles in the third edition and new articles upon musicians and musical subjects that had either been previously overlooked (these are rare) or have attained during the interval an importance that warranted their inclusion. The editor contributes a judicious summing-up of Elgar, an article which incidentally contains a complete clarification of the con. fused subject of the incomplete works about which the composer practised so much mystification. To this is appended a full catalogue of Elgar's works on the lines adopted by Grove for Beethoven. An even more elaborate—for the multiplicity of hir works demanded elaboration—catalogue of Liszt's compositions by Mr. Humphry Searle fills what was a serious gap in the previous edition.
The editor has turned to good use the presence in England of a number of German and Austrian scholars who could not tolerate the restrictions of the Third Reich. Dr. Wellesz is the most important of these. His contributions range from a most interest- ing discussion of modern operatic developments and a sympathetic analysis of Mahler, to learned essays upon Musicology and Eastern Church Music. Other foreign contributors arc Dr. Am Huth, Dr. Alfred Einstein and Dr. Willi Reich, who writes admirably on Alban Berg and on Twelve-Note Music. Broad- casting and the B.B.C. are the subject of extensive articles, to which are allied others on the Gramophone by Mr. Shaw- Taylor, Electrophonic Instruments by Canon Galpin and Electri- cal Transmission by Sir James Jeans. In this supplementary volume the wide range, scholarship and friendly humanity of the original " Grove " have been worthily maintained.
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