Musica Nostra
Alfred Alexander
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians Stanley Sadie (ed.) (Macmillan 20 vols., £850) When Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians in four volumes first appeared in 1879, it became at once the leading English reference book; nothing comparable previously existed. It gained woirld-wide acclaim for a different reason: at a time when music was subject to nationalistic rivalries, when Verdiand Wagner-ites belaboured one another with fisticuffs and in print, Grove's entries revealed a fairness, integrity and dignity which foreign works did not always possess.
Grove's dictionary went from strength to strength, gradually increasing in size; within 75 years, in 1954, it had reached its 5th edition of nine volumes, priced at £4 each. Now it is rewritten by Mr Stanley Sadie with the help of 100 editors and 2,500 contributors.
Sir George Grove had arbitrarily fixed 1450 'as the most remote date to which the rise of modern music can he carried back'. The New Grove goes back to Adam. Its biggest departure though, Mr Sadie points out, lies in the dictionary's treatment of non-Western and folk music as well as in its attention to 'third world' countries. As only three per cent of the material from earlier editions had been retained, Mr Sadie thought that the term 6th edition could be misleading and decided to christen it The New Grove. The ventures into new fields are interesting and praiseworthy but if they are responsible for the monstrous increase in price, the net gain appears dubious: one fears that the work will now be found only in libraries and no longer in the homes of music lovers.
The New Grove is a most impressive achievement and contains a wealth of excellent entries. The great composers are treated with circumspection and a high standard of scholarship. The lists of works seem comprehensive — though in layout and legibility rather inferior to those in the Italian encyclopedia La Musica (UTET). The pieces relating to musical instruments and their history are exemplary.
It may well seem unfair to praise single items after reading only a small proportion oI the work's 18,000 pages but I would like to mention the entry for the unjustly neglected Austro-Italian composer Antonio Smareglia — (Wexford should stage his Nozze Istriane!) — as the best precis of his life and work I have yet come across. I was also impressed by the shrewd assessment of Paul Whiteman, and pleased to see the note on Egisto Macchi. There is indeed a great deal to admire in The New Grove. What are its defects?
First of all its eliminations, e.g. that of the entry for the German composer Bernhard Fliess. Where will future students find the facts relating to `Mozart's Wiegenlied (Koechel No. 350) if such important items are discarded'? When I needed the details and dates about this most intriguing story of musical misattribution for a Radio 3 talk, I readily found them in Grove 5. The worldwide popularity of the Wiegenlied alone, recorded by Elizabeth Schumann, Mirella Freni and many others, should have secured Fliess a permanent entry. If such deletions became necessary to save space for early African tribal hooters, I, for one, would have willingly foregone the hooters.
Then too, there are errors of fact, and a lack of care with foreign words. For example, the German equivalent for the 'running crotchet', is wrong, and to place Grad° in Istria is a blunder, made worse by Mr Sadie's gratuitous puff for the Times Atlas of the World. But these are really trifles, and the book without flaws has still to be printed.
The most 'serious defect of The New Grove is its loss of dignity, possibly the result of appointing to the post of editor in chief a critic, whom Mr W. Rees-Mogg and Mr J. Higgins 'enabled to act'. Mr Sadie's prose simply does not fit a work of this type. Music is `even more universal' than before. It has changed 'more fundamentally', requiring 'evaluative writing'. 'Every known medieval composer is entered' all neatly 'alphabetised' — due to the 'invaluable Alison L.'
Mr Sadie has called on his fellow critics, particularly the powerful Rosenthal Warrack branch of Musica Nostra, to help with entries for contemporaries. In the proper sense of the word, critics and musicologists (whatever that silly term may mean) are not musicians. Administrators of course are not musicians either, and for that reason the entries for the Earl of Harewood and Sir John Tooley smack of sycophancy: the listing of their unquestioned, and unquestionable, attainments belongs to Who's Who.
Musica Nostra know how to look after each other. Mr Sadie gets himself described by Mr Noble, his ex-assistant at The Times, as 'a man of dry wit, sharp but sympathetic insight' and 'exceptional energy'. Returning the compliment, Mr Sadie calls Mr Noble 'a prominent broadcaster who writes with firm style, and hard thinking'. Mr Warrack becomes a 'careful and elegant writer' (sic) and Mr Rosenthal's work is 'highly regarded for its judiciousness' (sic sic). Such cheap journalistic pat-ball can be played in Sunday colour-supplements, but not in a serious work, They are — to hoist that hubrissodden gang with their own presumptious petard — not `groveworthy'.
In contrast to the large number of unjustifiable entries, very many great artists e.g. Joan Carlyle and Renato Cioni are ignored. The conductor Arthur Hammond, for decades one of the pillars of English operatic life is found wanting in musicianship, and refused a certificate of groveworthiness by journalists who usurped — and degrade — the office of judges. Britain's present vocal prosperity allowed at least two really great teachers — Audrey Langford and Ruth Packer — to emerge. It is absurd not to find them in Grove's.
The executants who are included are treated very unevenljr. Mr Blyth, generally one of the more decent critics despite his inept notions on what a singing voice can convey, devotes to Josephine Veasy a • quarter of the space allotted to Janet Baker: many such incongruities could be quoted. In style, as well as in their, for such a work, totally inadmissable and irrelevant. judgments, these entries horribly resemble their author's daily stint. One almost longs for Grove 5 — a case of vive le roi — le roi est mort ?
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