The New Grove

Abstract

A story is told within the firm of Macmillan,' the originating publishers of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, that on the appearance of the final volume of the first edition, in 1889, a friend wrote to Sir George Grove congratulating him on his achievement and remarking that the task of musical lexicography was now accomplished for all time. Nobody now has that kind of confidence; we recognize that every age needs its own reference works, not merely to absorb extensions in factual knowledge but also to represent the attitudes, the interpretations, the perspectives, the philosophies of the time. The present progress report on the new Grove is intended to give some idea of how its editors have planned and set about preparing a music reference work in English designed to meet the needs of the last quarter of the twentieth century. First, some facts about the new edition. It is to be published in 1978the whole dictionary simultaneously, not separately by volume or in fascicles. Grove 5 (1954) was in nine volumes, with a supplement (1961); such a scale would be insufficient for today's needs, as we visualize them, and we are expecting the dictionary to occupy fourteen volumes, each of about 1,000 pages, with a page size larger than Grove 5 but smaller than Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG). About 7 percent of its space will be devoted to illustrations. In mid-1975, just under five years from when work started, 60 percent of the articles (but representing only 40 percent of the total columnage) were in print; about 80 percent of articles were in our hands, nearly all the rest being overdue. The number of entries, excluding simple crossreferences, will be of the order of 22,500, and the number of words will be rather more than double the number in Grove 5. As to the price (the question I am most often asked about the dictionary is what it will cost), it is impossible to make a realistic prediction: what will a loaf of bread cost in 1978? If the new Grove were to be published now the price would be in the region of ?350, or $750, but mounting