From Harry Partch to Dolly Parton

Abstract

Sir George Grove, polymath and classic eminent Victorian, published the first volume of his great Dictionary of Music and Musicians with Macmillan in 1879. By the fifth edition of 1954 its four volumes had grown to ten, while retaining a fair amount of the original writing. A clean sweep was made in Grove 6 (The New Grove) of 1980, whose twenty 900-page volumes, edited through a decade of preparation by Stanley Sadie and currently costing over ?1000, contain almost entirely new material. Immensely successful (Macmillan are rumoured to have recouped the ?1 million or more invested in it within a month of publication), The New Grove has led to various spin-offs, with more to follow. Many of the major articles have been updated and re-issued, separately or in small groups, as paperback books (the idea of a Grove article having the scope of a small book is not new : several of Sir George's original contributions, such as his great articles on Beethoven and Schubert, were on a similar scale). The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments appeared in three volumes in 1984, containing articles partly new, partly reprinted or expanded from the parent publication. The New Grove Dictionary of American Music (popularly known as Amerigrove) was planned along similar lines, with a nod in the direction of the American Supplement that had first appeared in conjunction with the second edition of 1904-10, planned single volume materializing after ?ve years' preparation as the present four. No other arts subject possesses such an encyclopaedic yet commercially viable reference tool as the Grove enterprise (though Macmillan, flushed with its success, are now rectifying this with their projected Dictionary of Art). The New Grove's role in the growth of musicology as a consumer product, could it be assessed, would surely prove considerable. The dictionary's scope has always been broad, but it was only with the 1980 edition that the plurality of musical culture could be addressed in a modern perspective : there are numerous articles, some of them very extensive, on ethnic and folk musics, and popular and commercial music,