The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (29 Vol. Set)

Rating:
Summary: Don't believe that you are getting 20 books.
Review: Although the announcement makes you think that maybe yo will be getting 20 books for a song, you will be singing a different tune when it arrives. You will get one (yes, 1) volume selected apparently at random. I got volume 13.

Rating:
Summary: dumbed down
Review: Four stars for what has been carried over from the 1980 version, zero stars for what has been appended to it. We can't entirely blame the dictionary for the poor quality of most of these additions. The dictionary depends on a large pool of contributors, most of whom hold academic positions, and our academies are beset with insufficiently acknowledged problems.

One problem is the graduate-school analogue of what in secondary schools has been called "grade inflation". We might call it "degree inflation". Unqualified candidates are routinely pushed through graduate school; mediocre minds are awarded doctorates and assume faculty positions. This is partly the result of a misguided egalitarianism and partly the result of a quid-pro-quo cronyism. In any case, it is self-perpetuating and self-proliferating. It manifests itself here most obviously in rambling pseudo-intellectual essays on such empty buzzwords as "postmodernism".

Another problem is commercialization. It manifests itself here most obviously in vacuous and clumsily written (and randomly strewn with rock journalism cliches) extended accounts of various pop music figures, such as, for example, Bob Dylan and David Bowie. (Both Bob Dylan and David Bowie have composed interesting song lyrics and are worthy subjects for popular culture historians, but neither have any particular MUSICAL significance.)

Rating:
Summary: The definitive dictionary of music and musicians
Review: One could never hope for a 'compleat' dictionary of music and musicians any more than one could hope for hope for a 'compleat'library of knowledge in one publication. But, just as the Encycopeadia Britannica has come to be seen the most comprehensive summary available of knowledge generally, so has Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians come to be seen as the ultimate summary of information available about music and musicians.

The question now is: when will 'Grove' follow the Encyclopaedia Britannica and reach out to a wider audience via CD-ROM and Internet on-line services? For this reviewer: the sooner the better

Ian Bowie