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Information Sources in Music

editor: Lewis Foreman

ISBN 3-598-24441-X

hardback

publ K.G. Saur Verlag GmbH, München

444pp.

€110.00

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This is a specialised book with a price to match. The subject is the sources of information about music. The book in part acts as a map to information although its primary aim is to inform you about how to find the 'maps' and how they are organised rather than giving access to the information directly.

The editor, who also contributes four of the chapters, could hardly be better qualified: librarian for 37 years ending with 11 years as Chief Librarian at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He reviews for various music magazines (including Musicweb), note writer for CDs, writer of musical obits for The Independent and Honorary Senior Research Fellow University of Birmingham and the foremost mover and shaker for the revival of British music of the last two centuries. His dissertation, written during the early 1970s, documented the sources of information for the then emerging interest in researching the British Musical Renaissance.

The book is part of a K.G. Saur series. The series documents information sources for a vast range with a book for such abstruse subjects as Polymers and Plastics, Grey Literature, Cartography, Environmental Protection, Earth Sciences etc.

The volume in hand is admirable in its approach and coheres well across chapters from 21 contributors. Many familiar names appear here including Chris Banks (British Library), Jeremy Dibble (Parry's biographer), Sophie Fuller (author of the admirable Pandora Guide to Women Composers), Matthew Greenall (Director of the BMIC), Jacqueline Cavanagh (the extremely helpful person in charge of the BBC Data Archive at Caversham Park just outside Reading), Ian Ledsham (who rather like Ms Cavanagh was extremely helpful to me in my researches into the life and music of Holbrooke, Bate and others), the ever generous Stephen Lloyd (Dan Godfrey's biographer), Jürgen Schaarwächter (whose book 'Die britische sinfonie 1914-1945' should most urgently be translated into English) and Roderick Swanston.

The book is thoroughly up to date with no misguided inhibitions about the value of the internet and with clear preferences for google as the search engine of choice for the serious researcher.

The chapter titles give a clear idea of the span and grasp of this book:

Introduction - Music and its literature

Institutions - societies and radio stations

Music Information Centres

The secondhand trade

Copyright

Computers and Music

Internet and Music

Women in Music

Early Music revival

Standard reference sources

Musical periodicals

Music in newspapers

Theses

Foreign language material

Musical sources in government publications

Music in American government documents

Composer catalogues, bibliographies etc

Music publishing and publishers

Performance

New Music

Recordings as a research source

Film and its music

Composer trusts

Music publishers

BBC Written Archives

Ephemera of concert life

Pictures and picture research

Lewis Foreman is an occasional contributor of reviews and other material to MusicWeb. It therefor comes as no surprise that he and Melanie Groundsell should make a well merited recommendation of the site at pp. xii, 88 and 283.

A most valuable book of help both to researcher, bibliographer and librarians active in the field of classical music and its sources.

Rob Barnett

 

 

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