Index to Printed Music: Collections & Series (IPM) (review)

Abstract

Index to Printed Music: Collections & Series (IPM). Published by National Information Services Corporation (NISC). Databases licensed from James Adrian Music. http://biblioline.nisc.com/scripts/login .dll?NoIP (Accessed November-December 2007) [Requires an Internet connection and a Web browser; annual subscription pricing (2008 price): $925 for single concurrent user access; also available: 2-5 users, 6-10 users, unlimited users; access: IP filtering, URL referral or User ID/Password.] Finding specific compositions published in collected editions, monuments of music, historical sets, or other sets or series that contain multiple pieces has been a difficult task for decades. The first major resource to help with this undertaking was Anna Harriet Heyer's Historical Sets, Collected Editions, and Monuments of Music: A Guide to Their Contents (hereafter cited as Heyer), first edition published in 1957, 3rd and last in 1980. All three editions of this vital work were issued by American Library Association. Although collected editions, monuments, and like continued to come out after last edition of Heyer, most of them were not indexed in any centralized place; there was no good way to find individual pieces these newer publications contained. The works lists of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 1st ed., 1980; 2nd ed., 2001; online, 2001-; http://www.grovemusic.com) filled lacuna in part, particularly for collected works of major composers. Between first and second editions of New Grove came book Collected Editions, Historical Series & Sets & Monuments of Music: A Bibliography, by George R. Hill and Norris L. Stephens (Berkeley: Fallen Leaf Press, 1997; hereafter cited as Hill), which was a promising successor to Heyer but was of limited use in its printed form. According to its preface, this book is a list of important editions of historically significant and includes the most significant series and sets. A computerized index to Hill was envisioned from start. Index to Printed Music (IPM) is that long-awaited index. Indeed, it is not an index to be used in conjunction with book; rather it is book in searchable database form, considerably augmented by similar data for additional, more recent publications, and more detailed information about contents of publications listed in Hill. Many composers' collected sets are represented in Hill by a single listing for set without any detail on contents; it is not possible to determine from Hill which volume contains a given work. IPM indexes content of those collected sets, thereby enabling users to access them more easily. IPM also includes some more detailed indexing of works published as groups. For example, volume one of Sixteenth-century Madrigal ( Jessie Ann Owens, ed., New York: Garland, 1987-96) contains madrigals by Jachet de Berchem. Hill's book includes one listing under series title and one under Berchem's name with a collective title. In addition to these, IPM includes twenty-seven listings for individual madrigals with distinctive titles. This is clearly an improvement in access over printed version. A Product Factsheet on IPM is included within resource and is also available directly from NISC Web site (http://www .nisc.com/Frame/NISC_products-f.htm). Here resource is called only electronic title for finding individual pieces of music printed in standard scholarly editions. This statement is true. It is only such electronic resource. If one looks at reference resources in general, however, statement needs qualification; one cannot rely entirely on IPM to find scores in monuments and like. Perhaps resource's most important limitation is an unstated one on chronological boundaries of index. IPM begins where Hill's book began. Like book, it does not cover some older publications that are indexed in Heyer. …