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Title: Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Classical Musicians by Nicolas Slonimsky, Dennis McIntire, Laura Kuhn ISBN: 0-02-871271-4 Publisher: Gale Group Pub. Date: April, 1997 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $175.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: (Almost) all you wanted to know about contemporary musicians
Comment: This is a good reference book, although it falls short of the intentions of its compilers. Roughly the same size as the Concise Baker's, it certainly could have benefited with the inclusion of more thorough work lists. Many entries should have been updated.

I had bought this book mostly on account of what Laura Kuhn says openly in the Preface: "Entries contained in these pages are restricted to contemporary, classical musicians only, with complete work lists and carefully selected bibliographies" "Pop and jazz artists, idiosyncratically covered at best in previous editions of the Baker's, have been excised". In view of such statement of principles, I felt somewhat short-changed. In comparison with the Concise, there are many new articles - e.g. I had never found elsewhere entries for Kriukov or Pizzini, but conversely, there is no mention of composers perhaps better known than them, such as Glenn Branca or Peggy Coolidge. In addition, I was surprised and outraged when I found that some contemporary composers appearing in the Concise had been deleted! Examples: Frederick Cowen, Alberic Magnard, Mikolajus Ciurlionis. I could not found one valid reason for their exclusion.

The coverage of film music composers is quite irregular. While there are plenty of entries for film-only composers such as Elmer Bernstein or Alfred Newman, there is no mention of some of the most well known names such as Goldsmith, Barry, or Delerue.

In relation to the amount of information, too many of the entries are identical to the Concise Baker's, not having been revised, corrected or expanded. And about the pretence of "complete work lists", check for instance Roslavetz or Ivanovs, whose lists of works are far from exhaustive. Ivanovs is said to have written 20 symphonies rather than 21 and only two of his five symphonic poems are mentioned. The "selected bibliography" consists, in this case, of two books, the most recent being over 30 years old.

As to the excision of pop and jazz artists, a cursory check shows the presence of entries for Charles Aznavour, Jacques Brel, George Brassens, Miles Davis, Frederick Loewe, Alan Jay Lerner, Michel Legrand, Bobby McFerrin, none of whom is credited with any "classical music" accomplishment.

The articles are sometimes idiosyncratic. For example, reading about Penderecki, there is no mention whatsoever of his Post-modernist about face in 1977, although perhaps this suggests that the article has not been revised after that fact.

Kuhn explains in the Preface how a biographical dictionary is a means to invent history: "Giving some room to some, more room to others, ignoring the rest - displaying in both what is included and what is not both the ignorance and the prescience of its compilers". She mentions length of the entries as the first in the list of compiler's resources. Using this as a measure of importance in Kuhn's view, we can see what are the most important composers of the 20th century. What is your guess for No.1? Debussy? Schoenberg? Stravinsky? Bartók? Webern? Wrong. By a wide margin, her choice is Cage, to whose description by Slonismky she added "much beloved". Here is the ranking by the number of lines that she devoted to the most outstanding composers (excluding their list of works): 1. - Cage (426 lines) 2. - Stravinsky (293) 3. - Schoenberg (286) 4. - R. Strauss (187) 5. - Shostakovich (186). 6. - Debussy (184) 7. - Bernstein (167) Other composers that deserve more than 100 lines are Scriabin, Varèse, Vaughan Williams, Prokofiev, Ives, Sibelius and Barber. Bartók, at 99, does not quite make it. The length of Stockhausen's article equals David Raksin's.

In short, a good reference but a bit of a disappointment in the details.